From Under The Rubble

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

with Mikhail Agursk ’ 1

i ■ , r rJ rHt vn tw ee I

Evgeny Barabanov Vadim B
F. Korsakov and Igor Shafdrevicri

From Under
the Rubble

FROM UNDER THE RUBBLE

FROM UNDER THE RUBBLE

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mikhail Agursky,
A.B., Evgeny Barabanov, Vadim Borisov,
F. Korsakov, and Igor Shafarevich

Translated by A. M. Brock, Milada Haigh,
Marita Sapiets, Hilary Sternberg, and
Harry Willetts under the direction of
Michael Scammell

With an introduction by
Max Hayward

REGNERY GATEWAY

WASHINGTON D. C.

Copyright © 1974 by YMCA-Press, Paris.

Translation Copyright © 1975 by Little, Brown and Company (Inc.)

Copyright © 1981 by Regnery Gateway

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
brief passages in a review.

This edition reprinted by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company (Inc.)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Iz pod glyb. English.

From under the rubble / by Alexander Solzhenitsyn . . . [et al.] :
translated by A.M. Brock . . . [et al.] under the direction of Michael
Scammell ; with an introduction by Max Hayward,
p. cm.

Translation of: Iz pod glyb.

Reprint. Originally published: Boston : Little, Brown, cl975.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-89526-890-6 (alk. paper) : $10.95

1. Soviet Union — Social conditions — 1945- 2. Soviet Union —

Politics and government — 1953- 3. Civilization, Modern — 1950-
I. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich, 1918- . II. Title.

[HN523.5.I913 1989]

947.085— dcl9 88-32673

CIP

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Introduction

MAX HAYWARD

This collection of eleven essays edited by Solzhenitsyn (who
wrote three of the essays as well) opens with a brief foreword
indicating that its purpose is to stir debate, after over half a
century of enforced silence, on matters of fundamental prin-
ciple concerning the present state of Russia. The intention is
to suggest a diagnosis of the evils and difficulties that beset
the country, and to point to possible long-range solutions, if
only tentative ones. Although the issues are discussed pri-
marily in Russian terms, the authors show themselves to be
not uninformed about the outside world and fully conscious
that the problems of the planet now override those of any one
part of it.

From Under the Rubble has a forerunner in prerevolu-
tionary Russia, namely, a famous collection of articles by a
group of prominent scholars, writers and thinkers which was
published in 1909 under the title Landmarks (Vekhi). The
contributors included the religious philosophers Nikolai Ber-
dyayev, Sergei Bulgakov and Semyon Frank, the legal
theorist B. A. Kistyakovsky, the literary critic M. Gershenzon,
and the eminent economist, publicist and liberal politician
Peter Struve. All of them had grown up in the climate of
populist socialism and Marxism of the last decades of the

v

INTRODUCTION

nineteenth century, and had revolted against it, rejecting the
whole ethos of the Russian radical intelligentsia of the 1860s,
which had prepared the ground for it Berdyayev and Bulga-
kov were ex-Marxists, and Struve had indeed drafted the
manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic party at its found-
ing congress in 1898. (By a nice irony, it is his grandson,
Nikita Struve, who now publishes Solzhenitsyn’s work in
Russian in Paris.)

The contributors to Landmarks took a searching look at
Russian society, and in particular at the intelligentsia, which
they held responsible for Russia’s failure to find proper
means of confronting the country’s multifarious problems.
The main attack was against the narrowness of outlook and
sectarianism that had led the majority of Russian intellectuals
to seek solutions in an uncritical adaptation of the West Euro-
pean enlightenment in its nineteenth-century forms of posi-
tivism, atheist materialism, “scientific socialism,” and so on.
The authors called for a return to traditional spiritual val-
ues — which for most of them meant those enshrined in
Christian teaching — as a necessary condition for a regenera-
tion of the country’s intellectual, cultural and social life. All
of them were united — as Gershenzon wrote in his preface to
the volume — by their “recognition of the primacy both in
theory and in practice of spiritual life over the outward forms
of society, in the sense that the inner life of the individual
. . . and not the self-sufficing elements of some political
order is the only solid basis for every social structure.” 1
Landmarks caused a tremendous stir at the time of its pub-
lication, provoking outrage in the ranks of the intelligentsia.
Lenin, for example, denounced it as “an encyclopedia of lib-
eral apostasy.” The Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in October
i9!7 was soon to overwhelm the authors of Landmarks and

1. As quoted in Leonard Schapiro’s article on Landmarks: “The Vekhi
Group and the Mystique of Revolution” in the Slavonic and East European
Review, December 1955- For an excellent introduction to the wider context
of the Russian nineteenth-century intellectual tradition, in which it is impor-
tant to view both Landmarks and From Under the Rubble, see the same
author’s Rationalism and Nationalism in Russian Nineteenth Century Politi-
cal Thought, Yale University Press, 1967.

vi

INTRODUCTION

everything they represented, but the volume remained influ-
ential. Although it was under a strict ban in Soviet Russia,
constant official attacks on it in the Stalin era — particularly
during the cultural purges of 1947-1948 — served to keep its
memory alive among Soviet intellectuals and even, through
highly selective quotation, gave some idea of its contents.

Before they were dispersed in emigration, the Landmarks
authors, now joined by several others, managed to have
printed in the Bolshevik-controlled Moscow of 19*8 a second
volume of essays under the title De Profundis. In this they
spoke of the year-old October revolution as the fulfillment of
their forebodings in Landmarks about the inevitable conse-
quences of the intelligentsia's thirst for revolution. As Ber-
dyayev put it in his contribution, Russia had now been
seized by evil spirits like those in Gogol's nightmarish tales,
or by the “possessed” of Dostoyevsky's prophetic imagina-
tion. It was not simply a change of regime, but a spiritual di-
saster, a self-willed descent into the abyss. De Profundis was
confiscated and banned almost immediately. Only two copies
survived in the West and it was virtually unknown and unob-
tainable until it was reprinted in Paris in 1967* This sequel to
Landmarks must clearly have made a profound impression
on Solzhenitsyn: the Russian title of From Under the Rubble
( lz pod glyb) is a phonetic echo of the Russian words for De
Profundis ( lz glubiny ). 2

By modeling their collection of essays on Landmarks , Solz-
henitsyn and his associates demonstrate their conviction that
in order to talk meaningfully about present-day Russia it is
essential to cross back over the intellectual void of the last
sixty years and resume a tradition in Russian thought which
is antithetical to the predominant one of the old revolu-
tionary intelligentsia, particularly as it developed in the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century.

The publication of this joint profession of faith by a great
Russian writer now living in enforced exile, and a group of

2. It is hard to give a precise rendering of the title in English. The implica-
tion is of people speaking from beneath stone blocks or masses of earth or
debris that have buried them alive — see Solzhenitsyn's foreword.

vii

INTRODUCTION

intellectuals still inside the country — including one of its
leading mathematicians — is an eloquent response to the re-
cent tactics of the Soviet government in its efforts to stifle
dissent. The indiscriminate use of prison and the madhouse,
which is still by no means in abeyance, has been supplemen-
ted by the ostensibly more subtle policy of selective banish-
ment abroad. The hope evidently is that if some of the more
powerful voices that speak “from under the rubble” are re-
moved from the scene, those remaining behind will be de-
moralized and eventually silenced.

But the authors of From Under the Rubble demonstrate
that the voices of dissent will not so easily be stilled. The
central premise of the collection is that the problems of the
modem world, Soviet as well as Western, can no longer be
solved on the political plane. Instead, the quest for solutions
must begin on the ethical level. Since their approach is spiri-
tual in nature, the authors reject all forms of physical vio-
lence and compulsion. Their goal is to bring about in Russia
a moral revolution. As they see it, the political revolutionary
has always said: “Let us go and kill our enemies and then ev-
erything will be fine.” But as moral revolutionaries the au-
thors are saying, in effect, “Let us put ourselves in danger.
Perhaps we shall be killed. But as a result of our acts, there
may be an improvement in the life of the nation.”

The authors believe that new and better relations among
people can only come about if they embrace a new life of
repentance and self-restraint. This can happen among nations
as well as among individuals, for the authors are convinced
that the concept of the nation is not an anachronism, but that
it still has a relevant intrinsic value. Their idea is perhaps
best summed up by Solzhenitsyn himself. Upon the receipt
of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, he wrote: “Nations
are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities. The
very least of them wears its own special colors and bears
within itself a special facet of divine intention.”

viii

Foreword

The universal suppression of thought leads not to its extinc-
tion, but to distortion, ignorance and the mutual in-
comprehension of compatriots and contemporaries.

For many decades now not a single question, not a single
major event in our life has been freely and comprehensively
discussed, so that a true appreciation of it could be arrived at
and solutions found. Everything was suppressed, everything
was left to molder in unintelligible chaos, without thought
for the past and consequently for the future either. Mean-
while more and more events accumulated and piled up in
such crushing heaps that neither inclination nor strength was
left to try and sort them out.

And now people are approaching from outside and, heed-
lessly and irresponsibly, without let or hindrance, are making
all sorts of arbitrary judgments about our recent history and
the possibilities of our people. We start to protest and at once
bog down in polemics, as a result of which we are in danger
of missing the wood for the trees. For the voices destined to
express what was known at the appropriate time fell prema-
turely silent, the documents perished, and the gaze of the
outside researcher cannot penetrate into those dark depths
beneath the piles of unsorted rubbish.

ix

FOREWORD

It is from out of those dank and dark depths, from under
the rubble, that we are now putting forth our first feeble
shoots. If we wait for history to present us with freedom and
other precious gifts, we risk waiting in vain. History is
us — and there is no alternative but to shoulder the burden
of what we so passionately desire and bear it out of the
depths.

A.S.

x

Contents

Introduction v

MAX HAYWARD

Foreword ix

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

As Breathing and Consciousness Return 3

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

Socialism in Our Past and Future 26

IGOR SHAFAREVICH

Contemporary Socioeconomic Systems and

Their Future Prospects 67

MIKHAIL AGURSKY

Separation or Reconciliation? — The Nationalities
Question in the USSR 88

IGOR SHAFAREVICH

xi

CONTENTS

Repentance and Self-Limitation in the

Life of Nations 105

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

The Direction of Change 144

A. B.

Russian Destinies 151

F. KORSAKOV

The Schism Between the Church and the World 17a

EVGENY BARABANOV

Personality and National Awareness 194

VADIM BORISOV

The Smatterers 229

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

Does Russia Have a Future? 279

IGOR SHAFAREVICH

Notes on Contributors 295

Index 297

xii

FROM UNDER THE RUBBLE

As Breathing and Consciousness Return

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

(Apropos of A. D. Sakharov’s treatise “ Reflections on Prog-
ress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom .”) 1

This article, written four years ago, was not issued as sa-
mizdat, 2 but shown only to A. D. Sakharov himself. As samiz-
dat it was needed more at that time than now, since it
related directly to this well-known treatise. Since then Sa-
kharov’s views and practical proposals have traveled a long
way, so that today the article has very little relevance to
him, and is not a polemic with him.

“Therefore it’s too late,” I hear people objecting. If only it
were. In half a century we have not succeeded in calling
anything by its right name or thinking anything through,
and fifty years from now we shall still be catching up. Be-
cause all that has so far appeared in print is quite futile.
Here, as elsewhere, such a time lag is a normal feature of
Russian life since the revolution.

But it is not too late because in our country a massive sec-
tion of educated society is still stuck fast in the way of think-

1. See Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual
Freedom, trans. the New York Times (New York: Norton, 1968). — Trans.

2. Samizdat is a recent Russian coinage meaning literally “self-
publishing.” It refers to poems, essays, stories, articles, and so on, that are
typed out and passed from hand to hand to evade the censorship. — Trans.

3

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

ing which Sakharov has passed through and left behind. And
it is not too late for another reason, namely, that several
groups in the West apparently share the same hopes, illu-
sions and delusions.

ONE

The transition from free speech to enforced silence is no
doubt painful. What torment for a living society, used to
thinking for itself, to lose from some decreed date the right to
express itself in print and in public, to bite back its words
year in and year out, in friendly conversation and even under
the family roof.

But the way back, which our country will soon face — the
return of breathing and consciousness, the transition from
silence to free speech — will also prove difficult and slow,
and just as painful, because of the gulf of utter incomprehen-
sion which will suddenly yawn between fellow-countrymen,
even those of the same generation and same place of origin,
even members of the same close circle.

For decades, while we were silent, our thoughts straggled
in all possible and impossible directions, lost touch with
each other, never learned to know each other, ceased to
check and correct each other. While the stereotypes of
required thought, or rather of dictated opinion, dinned into
us daily from the electrified gullets of radio, endlessly repro-
duced in thousands of newspapers as like as peas, condensed
into weekly surveys for political study groups, have made
mental cripples of us and left very few minds undamaged.

Powerful and daring minds are now beginning to struggle
upright, to fight their way out from under heaps of antiquated
rubbish. But even they still bear all the cruel marks of the
branding iron, they are still cramped by the shackles into
which they were forced half-grown. And because we are in-
tellectually isolated from each other, they have no one to
measure themselves against.

As for the rest of us, we have so shriveled in the decades of

4

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

falsehood, thirsted so long in vain for the refreshing drops of
truth, that as soon as they fell upon our feces we tremble with
joy. “At lastl” we cry, and we forgive the dust-laden whirl-
wind which has blown up with them, and the radioactive
fallout which they conceal. We so rejoice in every little word
of truth, so utterly suppressed until recent years, that we
forgive those who first voice it for us all their near misses, all
their inexactitudes, even a portion of error greater than the
portion of truth, simply because “something at least, some-
thing at last has been said!”

All this we experienced as we read Academician Sa-
kharov’s article and listened to comments on it at home and
from abroad. Our hearts beat fester as we realized that at last
someone had broken out of the deep, untroubled, cozy torpor
in which Soviet scientists get on with their scientific work,
are rewarded with a life of plenty and pay for it by keeping
their thoughts at the level of their test tubes. It was a liberat-
ing joy to realize that Western atomic scientists are not the
only ones who feel pangs of conscience — that a conscience
is awakening among our own scientists too.

This in itself makes Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov’s fearless
public statement an important event in modem Russian
history.

The work finds its way to our hearts above all because of
the honesty of its judgments. Many events and phenomena
are called by the names which we all use in the secrecy of
our minds but are too cowardly to speak aloud. Stalin’s
regime is numbered among the “demagogic, hypocritical,
monstrously cruel police regimes”; we are told that in com-
parison with Hitlerism, Stalinism “wore a much more cun-
ning disguise of hypocrisy and demagogy” because it relied
on “Socialist ideology as a convenient screen.” We are re-
minded of the “predatory procurements” of agricultural pro-
duce and the “reduction of the peasantry to a condition
almost of serfdom.”

True, all this is said of the past, but the present day is not
forgotten. There is “great material inequality between town
and country,” “40 percent of our country’s population finds

5

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

itself in a very difficult economic situation” (the context hints
at, demands the word “poverty” but when one’s own
country is in question it sticks in the throat); whereas the 5
percent in the “boss class” are as highly privileged as “the
corresponding groups in the USA.” “No, more so!” we feel
like retorting, but the author forestalls us with his explana-
tions: the privileges of our country’s managerial group are
secret, not open and aboveboard, it is a matter of purchasing
loyal service to the existing system by bribes, previously in
the form of “salaries in envelopes,” now by “closed distribu-
tion of everything in short supply — foodstuffs, goods, and
services — and privileged access to resorts.” Sakharov speaks
out against the recent political trials, against the censorship,
against the new unconstitutional laws. He points out that “a
party using such methods of persuasion and education can
hardly lay claim to the role of spiritual leader of mankind.”
He protests against the subordination of the intelligentsia to
party officials, ostensibly in defense of “the interests of the
working class.” He demands that truth, not caste expediency,
set the limits to the exposure of Stalinism; he rightly calls for
“examination of the records of the NKVD by the whole na-
tion, and a full amnesty for today’s political prisoners. And
even in the most sacrosanct sphere, foreign policy, he lays on
the USSR “indirect responsibility” for the Arab-Israeli
conflict.

However, this level of analysis, if not this level of bold-
ness, is within the reach of other fellow-countrymen, though
they are silent. But Sakharov, with the assurance of a great
scientist, leads us upward to a loftier vantage point. With
sharp taps of his lecturer’s pointer he reduces to fragments
those idols, the economic myths of the twenties and thirties,
which, lifeless as they are, have for half a century cast a spell
during our school days which few can break even in old age.
Sakharov shatters the Marxist myth that capitalism brings
the productive forces to an impasse” or “always leads to the
absolute impoverishment of the working class.” For the first
time in our country Sakharov puts in proper perspective the
competition of economic systems, unforgettably represented

6

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

in a classroom poster by a socialist horse leaping over a capi-
talist tortoise.

Sakharov reminds us of the “burden of technical and orga-
nizational risk, and of development costs, which rests on a
country pioneering in technology,” and with great expertise
lists important technological borrowings which have made
the Soviet Union richer at the expense of the West. He re-
minds us that “catching up” in traditional branches of in-
dustry like iron and steel proves nothing, and that in the
really decisive sectors we are consistently behind. Sakharov
also destroys the myth of bloodsucking millionaires: they are
“not too serious an economic burden” because there are so
few of them, whereas “a revolution, which brings economic
development to a standstill for more than five years, cannot
be considered economically advantageous to the working
classes.” (Why not simply call it fatal?) As for the USSR itselfj
the myth that there is magic in socialist competition is laid
low (“it plays no obvious economic role”) and we are re-
minded that for all those decades “our people has worked at
full stretch, which has led to a certain exhaustion of the na-
tion’s resources.”

True, this demolition of sacred idols is hard going, and
Sakharov is at times unnecessarily lenient: he speaks only of
“a certain exhaustion,” and says that “in the provision of
high living standards . . . it is a drawn game between capi-
talism and socialism.” (I hardly think so!) But the very act of
crossing the forbidden line and daring to pronounce on mat-
ters which no one except the Founding Fathers has ventured
to touch takes our author a long way forward. If what we find
under the capitalist system is not unrelieved decay but “the
continued development of productive forces,” then “the so-
cialist world must not destroy the soil from which it sprang,”
for “this would be the suicide of mankind” by atomic war.
(As our propagandists choose to see it, atomic war means not
the suicide of mankind but the certain triumph of socialism.)
Sakharov gives sounder advice: we should renounce our
“empirical opportunistic foreign policy,” the “method of
maximum discomfiture of opposing forces without regard to

7

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

the general good and common interests.” The USSR and the
United States should cease to be antagonists and go over to
cooperation in giving the broadest disinterested aid to back-
ward countries; and a system of international supervision to
ensure respect for the Declaration of the Rights of Man
should be one of their highest foreign policy aims.

The author also rehearses the main dangers to our civiliza-
tion, the warning signs that man’s habitat is threatened with
destruction, and broadly poses the problem of saving it

Such is the level of Sakharov’s noble article.

TWO

But my purpose in writing this review is not to join in the
chorus of praise: it is perhaps too loud already. I am alarmed
by the likelihood that many of the fundamental ideas in Sa-
kharov’s article, which are insufficiently thought out and at
times clearly unsound, will merge with the swelling current
of free Russian thought only to distort or hinder its de-
velopment.

Let us confess that we have set down here in exaggeratedly
concentrated form all that seems best in Sakharov’s article.
But these statements do not form a tightly organized, vigor-
ous whole: they are thinly spaced, toned down, above all in-
terspersed with others which contradict them and often
belong to a lower level of argument.

We see a conspicuous fault in the fact that the article lav-
ishes attention on the internal problems of other coun-
tries — Greece, Indonesia, Vietnam, the United States,
China — while the internal situation in the USSR is exhib-
ited in the most benevolent light, or rather, indulgently un-
derlit. But here he is on very treacherous ground. We have
the moral right to make judgments on international problems,
and still more on the internal problems of other countries,
only if we take cognizance of our own internal problems and
do penance for our faults. We have no right to pass judgment
on the “tragic events in Greece” until we have looked to see

8

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

whether events at home are not still more tragic. Before cast-
ing an eye on “attempts to conceal this cynicism and cruelty
from the American people” we should take a good look
around — is there nothing similar nearer home? Where they
don’t just “try to conceal,” but are eminently successful? And
if “the poverty of twenty-two million Negroes is tragic,” are
not fifty million collective firm laborers still poorer? Nor
should we fail to recognize that the “tragicomic forms of the
personality cult” in China are merely a repetition, with slight
changes (not always for the worse), of our malodorous
thirties.

This is a canker which has eaten into all of us. From the
very beginning, however resoundingly the word “self-
criticism” was pronounced, however boldly printed, it has
always been criticism of the next man. For decades a belief
in our socialist superiority was instilled into us, and we were
permitted to sit in judgment only on others. So when we take
it into our heads to talk about ourselves nowadays, an uncon-
scious longing to extenuate our faults deflects our pens from
the straight line of hard truth. It is no easy thing for us to ac-
cept this return of free thought, to get used to it right away
and at one gulp. We timidly feel that to mention aloud the
defects of our social order and our country is a sin against pa-
triotism.

This discriminatory tolerance of “one’s own” and simulta-
neous severity toward others shows through more than once
in Sakharov’s work, and to begin with on the very first page:
in the crucial stipulation that although the object of his work
is to facilitate the rational coexistence of “world ideologies,”
he does not “mean by this ideological peace with those fanat-
ical, sectarian and extremist ideologies which admit no possi-
bility of rapprochement, no discussion or compromise, as for
instance the fascist, racist, militarist or Maoist ideologies.”
And that is all. End of list. Period.

What an insecure, jerry-built gateway to such an important
work I This arch would collapse and crush us! True, he says
“for instance,” indicating that the list of ideologies with
which there can be no reconciliation is not full, but what

9

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

strange modesty explains the omission of precisely that ideol-
ogy which at the very dawn of the twentieth century declared
all compromises to be “rotten” and “treacherous,” all discus-
sions with the heterodox to be idle and dangerous twaddle,
and proclaimed that in armed struggle and the division of the
world into red and white, into those for us and those against
us, lay the only solution of social problems. Since then that
ideology has had enormous success, colored the whole twen-
tieth century, struck a chill into three-quarters of the earth.
Why then does Sakharov not mention it? Does he suppose
that it can be talked round by gentle persuasion? If only it
were sol But no one has yet seen anything of the sort: this
ideology has not become the least bit less unyielding and in-
transigent. Is it implicitly included in his obscure, deprecat-
ing gesture, his impenetrable “for instance”?

A paragraph later Sakharov mentions among the “extreme
expressions of dogmatism and demagogy,” side by side with
the same old racism and fascism — Stalinism. But this is a
poor substitute.

In the Soviet Union since 1956 there has been nothing par-
ticularly bold, new or original in mentioning “Stalinism” as
something bad. The sentiment is not officially acceptable,
but it has spread far and wide among the public and is often
uttered in conversation. In the thirties or forties to write
down “Stalinism” in such a list would have been the act of a
hero and a sage, for at the time “Stalinism” was embodied in
a mighty, operative system, which had convincingly shown
what it could do both at home and in Eastern Europe. But to
invoke “Stalinism” in 1968 is sleight of hand, camouflage,
evasion of the problem.

We may justifiably wonder whether “Stalinism” is in fact a
distinctive phenomenon. Did it ever exist? Stalin himself
never tried to establish any distinctive doctrine (and given
his intellectual limitations he could never have created one),
nor any distinctive political system of his own. All Stalin’s
present-day admirers, champions and professional mourners
in our own country, as well as his followers in China, ada-
mantly insist that he was a faithful Leninist and never in any

10

AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

matter of consequence diverged from Lenin. The author of
these lines, who in his day landed in jail precisely because of
his hatred of Stalin, whom he reproached with his departure
from Lenin, must now admit that he cannot find, point to, or
prove any substantial deviations.

Was not the land given to the peasants during the revolu-
tion only to be taken into state ownership soon afterward (the
Land Code of 1922)? Were not the factories promised to the
workers, but brought under central administration in a matter
of weeks? When did the trade unions begin to serve not the
masses but the state? Who used military force to crush the
border nations (Transcaucasia, Central Asia, the Baltic
States)? What of the concentration camps (1918-1921)? The
summary executions by the Cheka? 8 The savage destruction
and plundering of the Church (1922)? The bestial cruelties at
Solovki 4 (1922)? None of this was Stalin — the dates, and his
standing at the time, are against it (Sakharov recommends
that “Leninist principles of public supervision of places of
confinement” should be reestablished. He does not tell us
which year’s principles, nor in which camps they were prac-
ticed. The early camps around the Solovetsky monasteries —
the only ones Lenin lived to see?) We credit Stalin with the
bloody enforcement of collectivization, but the reprisals after
the peasant risings in Tambov (1920-1921) and Siberia (1921)
were no less harsh — the difference was only that they did
not affect the whole country. Some people may mark up the
artificially forced pace of industrialization and the strangu-
lation of light industry to Stalin’s account, but this again was
not his invention.

Stalin did perhaps manifestly depart from Lenin in one re-
spect (though he was only following the general law of revo-
lutions): in the ruthless treatment of his own party, which
began in 1924 and rose to a climax in 1937. Can this be the
decisive difference, the distinguishing mark which tells our

3. The Cheka was the original name of the Soviet secret police
(1917-1922). — Trans.

4. The popular name for the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. Their
monasteries served as a place of exile during the Middle Ages and after the
revolution were turned into the first systematic Soviet labor camp. — Trans.

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present-day progressive historians that “Stalinism” belongs
in the exclusive list of antihuman ideologies, whereas its ma-
ternal ideology does not?

“Stalinism” is a very convenient concept for those “puri-
fied” Marxist circles of ours, who strive to differentiate them-
selves from the official line, though in reality the difference
is negligible (Roy Medvedev may be mentioned as a typical
example of this trend.) For the same purpose the concept of
“Stalinism” is still more important and necessary to Western
Communist parties — they shift onto it the whole bloody bur-
den of the past to make their present position easier. (In this
category belong such Communist theorists as G. Lukacs and
I. Deutscher.) It is no less necessary to those broad Left-
liberal circles in the West which in Stalin’s lifetime ap-
plauded highly colored pictures of Soviet life, and after the
Twentieth Congress found themselves looking most pain-
fully silly.

But close study of our modem history shows that there
never was any such thing as Stalinism, (either as a doctrine,
or as a path of national life, or as a state system), and official
circles in our country, as well as the Chinese leaders, have
every right to insist on this. Stalin was a very consistent and
faithful — if also very untalented — heir to the spirit of
Lenin’s teaching.

As breathing returns after our swoon, as a glimmer of con-
sciousness breaks through the unrelieved darkness, it is dif-
ficult for us at first to regain our clarity of vision, to pick our
way among the clutter of hurdles, among the idols planted in
our path.

Some of them Sakharov robs of their magic and dissolves
into dust with a touch of his blackboard pointer, but others
he respectfully passes by and leaves standing in all their
falsity.

If we accept his reservation about all the “ideologies with
which there can be no compromise” and rule them out (per-
haps even extending the list), what are the ones with which
Sakharov recommends coexistence? The liberal and Chris-
tian ideologies? Even as things are they hold no threat to the

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world, they are engaged in continual dialogue. But what are
we to do with his sinister list? Rather a lot of ideologies past
and present are represented in it.

What price then the convergence so eagerly awaited and
invoked?

And where are the guarantees that “ideologies with which
there can be no compromise” will not spring up in the
future?

In the same work, after so soberly assessing the economic
havoc wrought by revolutions, Sakharov envisages the “pos-
sibility of decisive action” through “the struggle of revolu-
tionary and national-liberation movements . . . when no
other means than armed struggle remains. . . . There are sit-
uations in which revolution is the only way out of an im-
passe.” Here again, the author is not contradicting
himself — he has merely contracted the squint characteristic
of the age — viewing all revolutions with general approval,
and unreservedly condemning all “counterrevolutions.”
(Who, though, can calibrate a sequence of violent events,
each the cause of its successor; who can determine the in-
cubation period, before the end of which a violent upheaval
is still to be called counterrevolution, but after which it be-
comes revolution?)

Incomplete liberation from modish dogmas imposed by
others is always punished by intermittent failures of vision
and overhasty formulations. Thus the Vietnamese war, in
Sakharov’s account, is regarded by world progressive opinion
as a war between the “forces of reaction” and “the will of the
people.” When regular divisions arrive along the Ho Chi
Minh trail — is that also “the people’s will”? Or when “regu-
lar” partisans set fire to villages because of their neutrality
and coerce a peaceful population with tommy guns — shall
we put this down to “the people’s will” or “the forces of re-
action”? How can we Russians, with experience of our own
civil war, pass such superficial judgments on the war in Viet-
nam? No, let us not wish either “revolution” or “counter-
revolution” on our worst enemies.

Once permit mass violence even in the most limited con-

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text and straightway the forces of “progress” and “reaction”
will pour in to help; it will swell and sweep over a whole
continent, and you will be lucky if it stops even at the brink
of nuclear war. What is left then of the peaceful coexistence
mentioned in Sakharov’s heading?

The sacrosanct statues around which our author treads
carefully include socialism — which is apparently so unre-
servedly accepted by all that it is not mentioned in the title
as a subject for discussion. In his exaltation of socialism Sa-
kharov indeed oversteps the mark. As if it were something
generally known and in no need of proof, he writes about the
“high moral ideals of socialism,” “the ethical character of the
socialist path,” and even calls this his main conclusion
(though it would obviously be more accurately called his
main pious wish).

In no socialist doctrine, however, are moral demands seen
as the essence of socialism — there is merely a promise that
morality will fall like manna from heaven after the socializa-
tion of property. Accordingly, nowhere on earth have we
been shown ethical socialism in being (and indeed the jux-
taposition of these two words, tentatively questioned by me
in one of my books, has been severely condemned by respon-
sible orators). In any case, how can we speak of ethical so-
cialism, when we do not know whether what we are shown
under that name is in feet socialism at all? Is it something
that exists in nature? Sakharov assures us that socialism, “as
no other social order could,” has “enhanced the moral signif-
icance of labor,” and that “only socialism has raised labor to
the peak of moral heroism.” But in the great expanses of our
collectivized countryside, where people always and only
lived by labor and had no other interest in life but labor, it is
only under “socialism” that labor has become an accursed
burden from which men flee. Let us add to this that through-
out our broad country and along its roads the heaviest manual
labor is performed by women, since the men moved onto
machines or into administration. Then there is the annual
mobilization of townspeople for compulsory seasonal labor.
We might even add that millions of white-collar workers at

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their office desks find their labor galling and detestable.
Without prolonging the list, I can say that I have met scarcely
anyone in our country who looks forward to Monday more
than to Saturday. And if you compare the quality of building
today with the masonry of earlier ages — particularly that of
the old churches — you will feel inclined to look for “moral
heroism” somewhere in the past.

Sakharov of course knows all this himself, and what he says
is the result, not of personal errors of his, but of the general
hypnosis of a whole generation, which cannot wake up
abruptly, cannot at once shake off the cumulative effects of
all those indoctrination sessions. That is why we read about
the “socialist principle of remuneration according to quantity
and quality of labor,” although the system has existed under
the name of “piecework” since the beginning of time. On the
other hand, when Sakharov sees anything bad in socialist
reality — “dissimulation and specious growth ... at the cost
of deterioration in quality” — he puts it down for some rea-
son not to “socialism” but to “Stalinist pseudosocialism,”
whatever that may be. “Some of the absurdities in our devel-
opment were not an organic consequence of the socialist path
but a kind of tragic accident” Where is the proof of that? In
the newspapers?

In this same hypnotic trance, Sakharov contemptuously ap-
praises nationalism as a sort of peripheral nuisance, which
hinders the glorious advance of mankind, but is doomed
shortly to disappear.

Ah, but what a tough nut it has proved for the millstones of
internationalism to crack. In spite of Marxism, the twentieth
century has revealed to us the inexhaustible strength and
vitality of national feelings and impels us to think more
deeply about this riddle: why is the nation a no less sharply
defined and irreducible human entity than the individual?
Does not national variety enrich mankind as faceting in-
creases the value of a jewel? Should it be destroyed? And can
it be destroyed?

Underrating as he does the vitality of the national spirit,
Sakharov also overlooks the possible existence of vital na-

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tional forces in Russia. This shows through quite comically in
the passage where he enumerates the “progressive forces in
our country” — and finds what? “The Left Leninist-
Communists” and the “Left Westemizers.” Is that all? We
should be spiritually poor indeed, we should be doomed, if
Russia today consisted merely of such forces as these.

The word progress also appears in the title of the article —
meaning technical, economic and social progress in the com-
mon traditional sense, and Sakharov leaves this too among
the untouched and undethroned idols, although in an ad-
jacent passage the drift of his own ecological arguments is
that “progress” has brought mankind into dangers which to
say the least are grave. In the social sphere, the author con-
siders “the system of education under state control” a “very
great achievement,” and expresses his “concern that a scien-
tific method of directing . . . the arts has not yet been rea-
lized in practice.” Speaking of purely scientific progress,
Sakharov with some satisfaction outlines the following pros-
pects: “Creation of an artificial superbrain,” “a resultant ca-
pacity to control and direct all vital processes at the level of
the individual organism . . . and of society as a whole . . .
including psychological processes and heredity.”

Such prospects come close to our idea of hell on earth,
and there is much here to perplex us and provoke sharp pro-
test, were it not that at a second perusal it becomes clear that
the whole treatise is obviously not intended to be read for-
mally, literally and with captious attention to detail, and that
the essence of the treatise is not what is expressed on the sur-
face, even when this is specially emphasized, not its political
terminology and intellectual arguments, but the moral dis-
quiet which informs it and the spiritual breadth of the au-
thor’s proposals, even if they are not always accurately and
successfully expounded.

Similarly with the prospects for technological progress.
Sakharov warns us — politicians, scientists, all of us — that
“the greatest scientific foresight and caution, the greatest
concern for universal human values” will be necessary.

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Clearly such an appeal is not a practical program: pleas to
politicians to show the greatest care for universal human val-
ues or to scientists to proceed cautiously with their discover-
ies are like barriers of flimsy board around a pit-shaft — and
the bottom is littered with others like them. In all the history
of science, has scientific foresight ever saved us from any-
thing? If it has, we normally know nothing of it. What hap-
pened was that a lonely scientist burned his plans without
showing them to anyone.

Sakharov himself did not bum his plans in time. Perhaps
this is what now gnaws at him, perhaps it is this pain that
makes him come out into the marketplace and call upon man-
kind at least to begin putting an end to evil, at least to stop
short of new and worse disasters!

He knows himself that caution is not enough, that “the
greatest concern is not enough,” but he is not armed with his
own terrible weapon, he holds out his weaponless hands to
us in friendship, he is not so much our teacher as a humane
spiritual adviser.

Similarly, Sakharov’s hopes of convergence are not a well-
grounded scientific theory, but a moral yearning to cloak
man’s last, nuclear, sin, to avoid nuclear catastrophe. (If we
are concerned with solving mankind’s moral problems, the
prospect of convergence is a somewhat dismal one: if two
societies, each afflicted with its own vices, gradually draw
together and merge into one, what will they produce? A soci-
ety immoral in the warp and the woof.)

“Do not extend spheres of influence,” “do not create dif-
ficulties for other countries,” let “all countries aim at mutual
aid,” and let the great powers voluntarily hand over 20 per-
cent of their national income — none of this is practical poli-
tics, nor does it claim to be. These again are moral
exhortations. The “prohibition of all privilege” inside our
country is also a mere cry from the heart, and not a practical
task for the “Left Communists” and “Left Westemizers” —
for how could they build up the necessary coercive force?
And can privilege in any case be eliminated by decree?

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In Russia such prohibitions, reinforced by powder and
shot, have been known in the past, but privilege popped up
again as soon as there was a change of bosses. Man’s whole
outlook must be modified so that privilege ceases to be at-
tractive and becomes morally repellent to its possessors —
only then can it be eliminated. The elimination of privileges
is a moral, not a political, task. Sakharov feels this himself
this is his real view of the matter, but the language of ethical
literature is lost to our generation, and so our author is forced
to make shift with the inexpressive language of politics. He
says of Stalinism, for instance, that “blood and mud have
sullied our banner.” Now obviously our author’s concern is
not for banners, and what he is trying to say here is: “They
have sullied our souls and depraved every one of us I”

The total inapplicability of our workaday language and
concepts to the author’s profound moral unease can be seen
in many passages in the treatise, and also in its title; what
Sakharov feels most strongly about will not fit into it, and that
is why it is so long and enumerative.

Intellectual freedom also figures in the title. In it Sakharov
sees the “key to the progressive reconstruction of the state
system in the interests of mankind.”

Certainly intellectual freedom in our country would imme-
diately bring about a great transformation and help us to
cleanse ourselves of many stains. Seen from the dark hole
into which we are cast, that is so. But if we gaze into the far,
far future — let us consider the West. The West has supped
more than its fill of every kind of freedom, including intellec-
tual freedom. And has this saved it? We see it today crawling
on hands and knees, its will paralyzed, uneasy about the fu-
ture, spiritually racked and dejected. Unlimited external free-
dom in itself is quite inadequate to save us. Intellectual
freedom is a very desirable gift, but, like any sort of freedom,
a gift of conditional, not intrinsic, worth, only a means by
which we can attain another and higher goal.

In accordance with his demand for freedom, Sakharov pro-
poses to introduce the multiparty system in “socialist” coun-

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tries. Obstruction to this of course comes entirely from the
regime, not from the public. But let us for our part try to rise
above Western conceptions to a loftier viewpoint. Do we not
discern in the multiparty parliamentary system yet another
idol, but this time one to which the whole world bows down?
“Partia” means a part. Every party known to history has
always defended the interests of this one part against —
whom? Against the rest of the people. And in the struggle
with other parties it disregards justice for its own advantage:
the leader of the opposition (except perhaps in England) will
never praise the government for any good it does — that
would undermine the interests of the opposition; and the
prime minister will never publicly and honestly admit his
mistakes — that would undermine the position of the ruling
party. If in an electoral campaign dishonest methods can be
used secretly — why should they not be? And every party, to
a greater or lesser degree, levels and crushes its members. As
a result of all this a society in which political parties are ac-
tive never rises in the moral scale. In the world today, we
doubtfully advance toward a dimly glimpsed goal: can we
not, we wonder, rise above the two-party or multiparty parlia-
mentary system? Are there no extraparty or strictly nonparty
paths of national development?

It is interesting that Sakharov, while praising Western de-
mocracy and enthusing about socialism, recommends for the
future world society neither the one nor the other, but inad-
vertently reveals that his dream is quite different: “a very in-
tellectual . . . world leadership,” “world government,”
which is obviously impossible either under democracy or
under socialism, for given universal franchise, when and
where would an intellectual elite be elected to govern? We
have here quite a different principle — that of authoritarian
rule. Whether such a government proved very bad or ex-
cellent, the means of creating it, the principles of its forma-
tion and operation, can have nothing in common with
modem democracy.

Here again, incidentally, Sakharov thinks and writes of his

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world rulers as an intellectual elite, but in the spirit of his
work, in accordance with his general view of the world, he
instinctively expects it to be a moral elite.

We may be rebuked for criticizing Academician Sakharov’s
useful article without apparently making any constructive
suggestions of our own.

If so, we shall consider these lines not a facile conclusion,
but merely a convenient starting point for discussion.

POSTSCRIPT, 1973

Having decided four years later to include this earlier ar-
ticle in the present collection, I must enlarge on the thought
with which it abruptly ended.

Among Soviet people whose opinions do not conform to
the official stereotype, there is a well-nigh general view that
what our society needs, what it must aspire to and strive for,
is freedom and the multiparty parliamentary system. The ad-
herents of this view include all the supporters of socialism,
but it is also more widely held than that. Indeed, it is so
nearly unanimous that to challenge it (in unofficial circles, of
course) looks downright indecent

This almost perfect unanimity is an example of our tradi-
tional passive imitation of the West: Russia can only recapitu-
late, it is too great a strain to seek other paths. As Sergei
Bulgakov® aptly remarked: “Westernism is spiritual surren-
der to superior cultural strength.”

The tradition is an old one, the tradition of the prerevolu-
tionary Russian intelligentsia, who believed not casually and
coolly, but with the zeal of martyrs, sometimes at the cost of
sacrificing their lives, that their cause and that of the nation
could only be (the people’s) freedom and (the people’s) hap-

5. Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944), a Marxist political economist who aban-
doned Marxism and wrote his seminal work. From Marxism to Idealism, in
1903. In 1923 he was expelled from the Soviet Union and ultimately settled
in Paris, where he became one of the chief organizers of the Russian Student
Christian Movement — Trans.

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piness. History knows how this worked out in practice. But
leaving that aside, let us look more deeply into the slogan
itself.

What was understood by “the people’s happiness ” does
not concern us here. Basically, absence of poverty, material
well-being (the contemporary official concept — uninter-
rupted rise in the level of material existence — exactly coin-
cides). It can, I think, nowadays be acknowledged without
discussion that as the ultimate aim of several generations, to
be paid for with the blood of millions, this is rather inade-
quate. The spiritual vector of happiness was, it is true, re-
membered by the Cadet® intelligentsia (and less often by
socialist intellectuals), but very vaguely, because it was more
difficult to imagine it on behalf of a people they understood
so little: they meant, in the first place, needless to say, educa-
tion (Western style), sometimes folk-dancing, even ritual, but
never of course the reading of the Lives of the Saints or
religious disputation. The general conviction was expressed
by Korolenko: 7 “Man is made for happiness as a bird is made
for flight.” This formula has also been adopted by our con-
temporary propaganda: both man and society have as their
aim “happiness.”

Although the Cadets, to bring themselves closer to the peo-
ple, called themselves the “People’s Freedom party,” the
demand for “freedom” and the concept of “freedom” had not
established themselves at all firmly among our people. The
peasant masses longed for land and if this in a certain sense
means freedom and wealth, in another (and more important)
sense it means obligation, in yet another (and its highest)
sense it means a mystical tie with the world and a feeling of
personal worth.

Can external freedom for its own sake be the goal of con-
scious living beings? Or is it only a framework within which
other and higher aims can be realized? We are creatures bom

6. An abbreviated name for members of the prerevolutionary Constitutional
Democratic party. — Trans.

7. V. G. Korolenko (1853-1921), a talented prose writer and memoirist who
initially supported the Populists; also a well-known philanthropist and
champion of minorities, especially the Jews. — Trans.

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with inner freedom of will, freedom of choice — the most im-
portant part of freedom is a gift to us at birth. External, or
social, freedom is very desirable for the sake of undistorted
growth, but it is no more than a condition, a medium, and to
regard it as the object of our existence is nonsense. We can
firmly assert our inner freedom even in external conditions of
unfreedom. (Remember how Dostoyevsky ridicules the com-
plaint that “our environment has destroyed us.”) In an unfree
environment we do not lose the possibility of progress to-
ward moral goals (that for instance of leaving this earth better
men than our hereditary endowment has made us). The need
to struggle against our surroundings rewards our efforts with
greater inner success.

There is, therefore, a miscalculation in the urgent pursuit
of political freedom as the first and main thing: we should
first have a clear idea of what to do with it. We were given
this sort of freedom in 1971 (more of it from month to
month) — and what did it mean to us? That every man was
free to ride off with a rifle, wherever he thought fit. And to
cut down telegraph wires for his own needs.

The multiparty parliamentary system, which some among
us consider the only true embodiment of freedom, has al-
ready existed for centuries in some Western European coun-
tries. But its dangerous, perhaps mortal defects have become
more and more obvious in recent decades, when su-
perpowers are rocked by party struggles with no ethical
basis; when a tiny party can hold the balance between two
big ones and over an extended period determine the fate of
its own and even neighboring peoples; when unlimited free-
dom of discussion can wreck a country’s resistance to some
looming danger and lead to capitulation in wars not yet lost;
when the historical democracies prove impotent, faced with a
handful of sniveling terrorists. The Western democracies
today are in a state of political crisis and spiritual confusion.
Today, more than at any time in the past century, it ill be-
comes us to see our country’s only way out in the Western
parliamentary system. Especially since Russia’s readiness for

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such a system, which was very doubtful in 1917, can only
have declined still further in the half century since.

Let us note that in the long history of mankind there have
not been so very many democratic republics, yet people
lived for centuries without them and were not always worse
off. They even experienced that “happiness” we are forever
hearing about, which was sometimes called pastoral or patri-
archal (and is not a mere literary invention). They preserved
the physical health of the nation (obviously they did, since
the nation did not die out). They preserved its moral health,
too, which has left its imprint at least on folklore and pro-
verbs — a level of moral health incomparably higher than
that expressed today in simian radio music, pop songs and in-
sulting advertisements: could a listener from outer space
imagine that our planet had already known and left behind it
Bach, Rembrandt and Dante?

Many of these state systems were authoritarian, that is to
say, based on subordination to forms of authority varying in
origin and quality. (We understand the term in the broadest
possible way, taking in everything from power based on un-
questionable authority, to authority based on unquestionable
power.) Russia too existed for many centuries under various
forms of authoritarian rule, Russia too preserved itself and its
health, did not experience episodes of self-destruction like
those of the twentieth century, and for ten centuries millions
of our peasant forebears died feeling that their lives had not
been too unbearable. If such systems have functioned for
centuries on end in many states, we are entitled to believe
that, provided certain limits are not exceeded, they too can
offer people a tolerable life, as much as any democratic re-
public can.

Together with their virtues of stability, continuity, immu-
nity from political ague, there are, needless to say, great
dangers and defects in authoritarian systems of government:
the danger of dishonest authorities, upheld by violence, the
danger of arbitrary decisions and the difficulty of correcting
them, the danger of sliding into tyranny. But authoritarian

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regimes as such are not frightening — only those which are
answerable to no one and nothing. The autocrats of earlier,
religious ages, though their power was ostensibly unlimited,
felt themselves responsible before God and their own con-
sciences. The autocrats of our own time are dangerous pre-
cisely because it is difficult to find higher values which
would bind them.

It would be more correct to say that in relation to the true
ends of human beings here on earth (and these cannot be
equated with the aims of the animal world, which amount to
no more than unhindered existence) the state structure is of
secondary significance. That this is so, Christ himself teaches
us. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” — not because
every Caesar deserves it, but because Caesar’s concern is not
with the most important thing in our lives.

If Russia for centuries was used to living under autocratic
systems and suffered total collapse under the democratic sys-
tem which lasted eight months in 1917, perhaps — I am only
asking, not making an assertion — perhaps we should recog-
nize that the evolution of our country from one form of au-
thoritarianism to another would be the most natural, the
smoothest, the least painful path of development for it to
follow? It may be objected that neither the path ahead, nor
still less the new system at the end of it, can be seen. But for
that matter we have never been shown any realistic path of
transition from our present system to a democratic republic of
the Western type. And the first-mentioned transition seems
more feasible in that it requires a smaller expenditure of
energy by the people.

The state system which exists in our country is terrible not
because it is undemocratic, authoritarian, based on physical
constraint — a man can live in such conditions without harm
to his spiritual essence.

Our present system is unique in world history, because
over and above its physical and economic constraints, it de-
mands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and ac-
tive participation in the general, conscious lie. To this
putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human

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AS BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RETURN

beings who wish to be human cannot consent When Caesar,
having exacted what is Caesar’s, demands still more insis-
tently that we render unto him what is God’s — that is a sac-
rifice we dare not make!

The most important part of our freedom, inner freedom, is
always subject to our will. If we surrender it to corruption,
we do not deserve to be called human.

But let us note that if the absolutely essential task is not
political liberation, but the liberation of our souls from partic-
ipation in the lie forced upon us, then it requires no physical,
revolutionary, social, organizational measures, no meetings,
strikes, trade unions — things fearful for us even to con-
template and from which we quite naturally allow circum-
stances to dissuade us. No! It requires from each individual a
moral step within his power — no more than that. And no
one who voluntarily runs with the hounds of falsehood, or
props it up, will ever be able to justify himself to the living,
or to posterity, or to his friends, or to his children.

We have no one to blame but ourselves, and therefore all
our anonymous philippics and programs and explanations are
not worth a farthing. If mud and dung cling to any of us it is
of his own free will, and no man’s mud is made any the less
black by the mud of his neighbors.

1969-October 1973

25

Socialism in Our Past and Future

IGOR SHAFAREVICH

This article summarizes the authors longer work on the
same topic. To that work we refer the reader who may wish
to acquaint himself in greater detail with the facts and argu-
ments which support his conclusions . 1

SOCIALISM TODAY

Every generation is liable to make the mistake of exagger-
ating the significance of its own era, believing itself destined
to witness a key turning point in history. In feet, radical
changes involving the basic principles of human life happen
once in five hundred or more years. But they do happen, as
did the decline of antiquity and the break with the Middle
Ages. And some generations are fated to live at those times.

It can hardly be doubted that our era is a turning point. In
many of its basic activities mankind has come up against the
feet that further movement along the paths followed hitherto
is impossible and leads into a blind alley. This is true in the

l. The Socialist Phenomenon, trans. William Tjalsma (New York: Harper & Row,
1980). This work had not been published, either in the Soviet Union or abroad,
when the present collection was first published, in 1974, and was thought at the
time to be known only to the author and perhaps a few friends. The work was
published in Russian in France under the title Sotsializm kak iavlenie mxrovoi istorii in
1975 by YMCA Press.

26

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

spiritual sphere, in the organization of society, and in the
sphere of industrial production (because of the inconsistency
of the idea of a constantly expanding industrial society). The
generations that come immediately after us must choose new
paths and thus determine history for many centuries to come.
For this reason, problems that appear to be insoluble stand
out with painful clarity, and the dangers which threaten us
yawn blackly ahead. Possible ways out can be seen only
dimly, and the voices which speak about them are diffident
and contradictory.

There exists, however, one voice which is untinged by
doubts or obscurity; there exists a doctrine which points con-
fidently to the future of mankind — socialism. At present it is
divided into countless currents, each claiming to be the sole
exponent of socialism and considering the others to be pseu-
dosocialist. If we eschew such narrow partisanship and exam-
ine which countries are headed by governments that have
proclaimed socialism as their aim, we shall see that the
greater part of mankind in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin
America has already started to move in that direction. And in
the rest of the world socialist parties are contending for
power and socialist teachings prevail among young people.
Socialism has become such a force that even the most promi-
nent politicians are obliged to curry favor with it and the
most weighty philosophers to make obeisances to it.

All the evidence is that man has very little time left to
decide for or against a socialist future. Yet this decision can
determine his fate for the rest of time. Accordingly, one of
the most urgent questions of our time is what is socialism?
What is its origin? What forces does it use? What are the
causes of its success? Where is it taking us?

We can judge how far our understanding of the matter has
progressed simply by the number of contradictory answers
that are given to any one of these questions by representatives
of the various socialist movements. To avoid a multiplicity of
examples we shall adduce just a few opinions concerning the
origin of socialism.

“When feudalism was overturned and ‘free’ capitalist soci-

27

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

ety appeared it was immediately discovered that this free-
dom denoted a new way of oppressing and exploiting the
workers. Various socialist movements at once came into
being as a reflection of this tyranny and a protest against it”
(V. I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Components of
Marxism).

. . African societies have always lived by an empirical,
natural socialism, which can be termed instinctive” (the
ideologist of “African socialism,” Dudu Tiam).

“Socialism is a part of the religion of Islam and has been
closely linked with the character of its people ever since that
people existed as nomadic pagans” (the ideologist of “Arab
socialism,” al-Afghani).

What kind of peculiar phenomenon is this, that it can
evoke such different judgments? Is it a collection of uncon-
nected movements which for some incomprehensible reason
insist on sharing one name? Or do they really have some-
thing in common beneath their external variety?

The most basic and obvious questions about socialism do
not seem to have been answered at all; other questions, as
will be seen later, have not even been asked. This ability to
repel rational consideration seems itself to be yet one more
enigmatic characteristic of this enigmatic phenomenon.

In this essay I shall try to consider these questions and
suggest some possible conclusions, using the best-known
sources — the classics of socialism and composite histories.

As a first approach let me try to describe purely phenome-
nologically the general features of present-day socialist states
and doctrines. The most emphatically proclaimed and the
most widely known principle is, of course, the economic one:
socialization of the means of production, nationalization, the
various forms of state economic control. The primacy of eco-
nomic demands among the basic principles of socialism is
also emphasized in The Communist Manifesto of Marx and
Engels: . . Communists can state their theory in one prop-

osition: the destruction of private property.”

If one considers this by itself, one naturally asks whether

28

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

there is any difference in principle between socialism and
capitalism. Isn’t socialism just a monopolistic form of capital-
ism, isn’t it “state capitalism”? Such a doubt can indeed arise
if one concentrates on economics alone, though even in eco-
nomics there are many profound differences between capital-
ism and socialism. But in other areas we come up against the
true contradictions in principle between these systems.
Thus, the basis of all modem socialist states is the party, a
new formation which has nothing but the name in common
with the parties of capitalist countries. It is typical of the so-
cialist states that they try to spread their brand of socialism to
other countries. This tendency has no economic basis and is
harmful for the state, because it usually leads to the
emergence of young and more aggressive rivals in its own
camp.

At the bottom of all these differences lies the feet that so-
cialism is not just an economic system, as is capitalism, but
also — perhaps above all — an ideology . This is the only ex-
planation for the hatred of religion in socialist states, a hatred
which cannot be explained on economic or political grounds.
This hatred appears like a birthmark in all the socialist states,
but with varying degrees of prominence: from the almost
symbolic conflict of the Fascist state in Italy with the Vatican
to the total prohibition of religion in Albania and its procla-
mation as “the world’s first atheist state.”

Turning from the socialist states to socialist teachings, we
meet with the same familiar positions: abolition of private
property and hostility toward religion. We have already quo-
ted The Communist Manifesto on the destruction of private
property. The struggle with religion was the point of depar-
ture of Marxism and an indispensable element in the social
reformation of the world. In his article Toward a Critique of
HegeVs “ Philosophy of Law” Marx said: “. . . the criticism
of religion is the premise for any other form of criticism. . . ,
An obvious proof of the German theory’s radicalism, and nec-
essarily of its practical energy, is the fact that it starts by
decisively casting religion aside. . . . The emancipation of
the German is the emancipation of mankind. The brain of

29

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

this emancipation is philosophy” (he has the atheistic aspects
of Feuerbach’s atheism in mind) “and its heart is the prole-
tariat.”

S. Bulgakov, 2 in his work Karl Marx as a Religious Type,
has shown how militant atheism, Marx’s central motivation,
gave birth to his historical and social ideas: the ignoring of
the individual and the human personality in the historical
process, “the materialist interpretation of history,” and so-
cialism. This point of view is fully confirmed in the posthu-
mously published drafts for Marx’s book The Holy Family.
There, Marx regards socialism as the highest level of athe-
ism: if atheism “affirms man through the denial of God,” if it
is the “negative affirmation of man,” then socialism is “man’s
positive affirmation.”

But socialist doctrine includes principles which are not
proclaimed by the socialist states, at least not openly. Thus,
anybody reading The Communist Manifesto with an open
mind will be surprised at the amount of space devoted to the
destruction of the family, to the rearing of children away from
their parents in state schools, to wife-sharing. In their argu-
ments with their opponents the authors nowhere renounce
these propositions, but try to prove that these principles are
higher than those on which the bourgeois society of their
time was based. There is no evidence of a subsequent renun-
ciation of these views. 3

In modem left-wing movements which are socialist but
not, for the most part, Marxist, the slogan of “sexual revolu-
tion,” that is, the destruction of traditional family rela-
tionships, also plays a basic part. A clear recent example of
this tendency is the “Red Army,” the Trotskyist organization
in Japan, which became famous after a series of murders
committed by it at the beginning of the 1970s. The victims

2. See note on page 20 . — Trans.

3. The attitude to this delicate question can be traced in the various transla-
tions of The Communist Manifesto. In the collected works of Marx and
Engels of 1929 we read: “The only reproach which it might be possible to
level at Communists is that they want official and open wife-sharing instead
of hypocritical and concealed wife-sharing.” In the 1955 edition the words
“that they want” are replaced by “that they are alleged to want.”

30

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

were mostly members of the organization itself. New
members were supposed to break all family ties and the
murders took place when this rule was ignored. The accusa-
tion “he behaved like a husband” was considered to justify a
death sentence. The murder of one partner was often en-
trusted to the other. Any children bom were taken from their
mothers and given to another woman, who fed them on dried
milk.

So, among the principles which are present in many un-
connected socialist states or present-day movements and
which can therefore be attributed to the basic premises of so-
cialism, are: the abolition of private property, the destruc-
tion of religion, the destruction of the family. Socialism
appears before us not as a purely economic concept, but as an
incomparably wider system of views, embracing almost every
aspect of human existence.

SOCIALISM IN THE PAST

We may hope to evaluate socialism correctly if we can find
the right scale by which to measure it. With this in mind it is
natural to step back from the perhaps too narrow frame of
contemporaneity, and to consider it in its wider historical
context. This we shall do in relation to socialist states and to
socialist teachings.

Are socialist states specific to our era, or do they have prec-
edents? There can be no doubt about the answer: many cen-
turies and even millennia ago there existed societies which
embodied much more fully and consistently the socialist ten-
dencies which we observe in modem states. Two examples
will suffice.

(1) Mesopotamia in the twenty-second and twenty-first
centuries B.C. Mesopotamia was one of the cradles of civiliza-
tion where the first states known to historians arose in the
fourth millennium before Christ. They were formed on the
basis of the economies of separate temples, which collected
large masses of peasants and craftsmen around them and de-

31

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

veloped an intensive agriculture based on irrigation. Toward
the middle of the third millennium, Mesopotamia broke up
into small kingdoms in which the basic economic units re-
mained the separate temples. Then, the Accadian king
Sargon began the era when Mesopotamia was again united in
a single state. I shall summarize some of the facts about the
state which in the twenty-second and twenty-first centuries
united Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Elam. Its capital was Ur,
and the whole period is called the era of the Third Dynasty
of Ur.

Archaeologists have found huge quantities of cuneiform
tablets reflecting the economic life of the time. From these
we know that the basis of the economy remained the temple
units, but after the unification they lost all their indepen-
dence and became cells in a unified state economy. Their
heads were appointed by the king, they submitted detailed
accounts to the capital, and their work was reviewed by the
king’s inspectors. Groups of workers were often transported
from one temple to another.

Agricultural workers, men, women and children, were di-
vided into parties headed by overseers. They worked all the
year round, moving from one field to another and receiving
seed grain, tools and draft animals from temple and state
stores. Similarly, in groups under a commander, they used to
go to the stores for their food. The family was not regarded as
an economic unit: provisions were issued not to the head of a
family but to each worker or more often to the commander.
The documents relate separately to men, women, children
and orphans. Evidently there was no question of being al-
lowed even the use, let alone the ownership, of plots of land
for this category of workers.

The other groups of inhabitants fed themselves by cultivat-
ing the plots set aside for them. Thus there were fields allo-
cated to individuals, fields for craftsmen and fields for
shepherds. But these fields were worked by the same work-
ers as the state lands, and the work was supervised by state
officials.

The towns contained state workshops, of which the biggest

32

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

were in the capital, Ur. The workers received tools, raw ma-
terials and half-finished products from the state. The prod-
ucts of the workshops went into the state warehouses.
Craftsmen, like agricultural workers, were divided into par-
ties under overseers. Provisions were issued to them by the
state stores on the basis of lists.

Agricultural workers and craftsmen figure in the accounts
as workers of full strength, two-thirds strength, or one-sixth
strength. On this depended the norms for their provisions.
Work norms also existed which determined the scale of the
worker’s rations. The temples submitted lists of the dead, the
sick, and of absentees (with reasons). Workers could be trans-
ferred from one field to another, from one workshop to an-
other, sometimes from one town to another. Agricultural
workers were sent to assist in the workshops and craftsmen
were sent to work in the fields or haul barges. The bondage
of large classes of the population is highlighted by the nu-
merous documents concerning fugitives. These documents
name the fugitives and their relatives, and they concern not
only barbers or the sons of shepherds, but also priests and
their sons. This picture of the life of the workers opens with
regular statements about the death rate (for the removal of
the dead from food lists). One document declares a 10 per-
cent mortality among its workers; another, 14 percent; yet
another, 28 percent. Mortality was particularly high among
women and children, who were employed on the heaviest
work, such as hauling.

(2) The empire of the Incas. This great empire, numbering
several million inhabitants and covering the territory from
present-day Chile to Ecuador, was conquered by Spain in the
sixteenth century. The conquerors have left detailed descrip-
tions which give an excellent picture of the life which they
could see or learn about from the natives. The descriptions
depict the nature of the social system there so clearly that
even in modem histories of this state, the headings very
often use the term “socialist.”

The Inca state did not know private ownership of the
means of production. Most of its inhabitants hardly owned a

33

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

thing. Money was unknown. Trade played no perceptible
role in the economy.

The basis of the economy, the land, belonged theoretically
to the head of the state, the Inca. That is, it was state property
and the inhabitants only had the use of it. Members of the
governing class, the Incas, owned some land only in the
sense that they received the income from it. The cultivation
of these lands was done by the peasants as a form of service
to the state and was supervised by state officials.

The peasant received for his use a plot of specified size
and additional strips as his family grew. When the peasant
died, all the land reverted to the state. There were two other
large categories of land: that owned directly by the state, and
that owned by the temples. All the land was worked by de-
tachments of peasants commanded and supervised by of-
ficials. Even the moment to begin work was indicated by a
signal, which consisted of an official blowing a hom from a
tower specially constructed for this purpose.

Peasants also worked as craftsmen. They received raw ma-
terials from state officials and handed their products back to
them. Peasants were also builders, and for this purpose they
were organized into great work brigades of up to twenty
thousand men. Finally, the peasants were liable for military
service.

The whole life of the population was regulated by the
state. For the Inca governing class there existed only one
field of activity, service in the military or civilian bureau-
cracy, for which they were trained in closed state schools.
The details of their personal life were controlled by the state.
For instance, an official of a given rank could have a pre-
scribed number of wives and concubines, a set amount of
gold and silver vessels, and so on.

But the life of the peasant was, of course, much more regi-
mented. All his activities were prescribed for each period of
his life: between the ages of nine and sixteen he was to be a
shepherd, from sixteen to twenty he had to serve in an Inca’s
house, and so on down to old age. Peasant girls could be sent
by the officials to the Incas’ houses as servants or concubines,

34

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

and they supplied the material for the mass human sacrifices.
Peasant marriages were arranged by an official once a year
according to lists prepared in advance.

The peasants’ diet, the size of their huts and their utensils
were all laid down. Special inspectors traveled about the
country to ensure that the peasants observed all these prohi-
bitions and kept working.

The peasant received his clothing, a cape, from state stores,
and in each province the cape was of a specified color and
could not be dyed or altered. These measures, and the fact
that each province prescribed a distinctive hairstyle, facili-
tated surveillance of the population. Peasants were forbidden
to leave their village without the permission of the authori-
ties. The bridges and town boundaries were guarded by
checkpoints.

This whole system was supported by a schedule of punish-
ments elaborated with striking thoroughness. Almost always
they amounted to the death penalty, which was executed in
an extraordinary variety of ways. The condemned were
thrown into ravines, stoned, hung by the hair or the feet,
thrown into a cave with poisonous snakes. Sometimes, in ad-
dition to this, they were tortured before being killed, and af-
terward the body was not allowed to be buried: instead, the
bones were made into flutes and skins used for drums.

These two examples cannot be ignored as isolated para-
doxes. One could quote many others. A hundred and fifty
years after the Spanish conquest of the Incas, for example,
the Jesuits constructed in a remote part of Paraguay a society
on analogous principles. Private ownership of the land did
not exist, there was neither trade nor money, and the life of
the Indians was just as strictly controlled by the authorities.

The Old Kingdom of Egypt was close to the Mesopotamian
states both in time and because of its system. The Pharaoh
was considered the owner of all the land and gave it only for
temporary use. The peasants were regarded as one of the
products of the land and were always transferred with it
They had obligations of state service: digging canals, build-
ing pyramids, hauling barges, quarrying and transporting

35

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

stone. In the state-owned enterprises craftsmen and workers
received tools and raw materials from the king’s stores and
gave their products back to them. The bureaucracy of scribes
who managed these tasks is compared by Gordon Childe
with the “commissars of Soviet Russia.” He writes, “Thus
about three thousand years before Christ an economic revo-
lution not only secured for the Egyptian craftsman his means
of subsistence and his raw material, but also created the con-
ditions for literacy and learning and gave birth to the State.
But the social and economic organization created in Egypt by
Menes and his successors as revolutionaries was centralized
and totalitarian” (What Happened in History ). 4

One could cite other examples of societies whose, life was
to a significant degree based on socialist principles. But the
ones we have already indicated show sufficiently clearly that
the emergence of socialist states is not the privilege of any
specific era or continent. It seems that this was the form in
which the state arose: “the world’s first socialist states” were
the world’s first states of any kind.

If we turn to socialist doctrine, we see a similar picture
here too. These teachings did not arise either in the twen-
tieth century or the nineteenth; they are more than two thou-
sand years old. Their history can be divided into three
periods.

(1) Socialist ideas were well known in antiquity. The first
socialist system, whose influence can be seen in all its count-
less variations right up to the present, was created by Plato.
Through Platonism socialist ideas penetrated to the Gnostic
sects which surrounded early Christianity, and also to Mani-
chaeism. In this period the ideas of socialism were prop-
agated in schools of philosophy and in narrow mystical
circles.

(2) In the Middle Ages socialist ideas found their way to
the masses. In a religious guise they were propagated within
various heretical movements, the Catharists, the Brethren of
the Free Spirit, the Apostolic Brethren, and the Beghards.

4. See Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (New York: Penguin
Books, 1946).— Trans.

36

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

They inspired several powerful popular movements, for ex-
ample, the Patarenes of fourteenth-century Italy, or the
Czech Taborites of the fifteenth century. Their influence was
particularly strong during the Reformation and their traces
can still be seen in the English revolution in the seventeenth
century.

(3) Beginning with the sixteenth century, socialist ideol-
ogy took a new direction. It threw off its mystical and re-
ligious form and based itself on a materialistic and rationalist
view of the world. Typical of this was a militantly hostile atti-
tude to religion. The spheres in which socialist ideas were
propagated changed yet again: the preachers, who had ad-
dressed themselves to craftsmen and peasants, were replaced
by philosophers and writers who strove to influence the read-
ing public and the higher strata of society. This movement
came to its peak in the eighteenth century, the “Age of En-
lightenment.” At the end of that century a new objective
made itself felt, that of bringing socialism out of the salons,
out of the philosophers study, and into the suburbs, onto the
streets. There followed a renewed attempt to put socialist
ideas behind a mass movement.

In this writer’s opinion, neither the nineteenth nor the
twentieth century introduced anything that was new in prin-
ciple into the development of socialist ideology.

Let us cite a few illustrations to give an idea of the nature
of socialist teachings and to draw attention to certain features
which will be important in the discussion to follow.

(1) Plato’s Republic depicts an ideal social system. In
Plato’s state, power belongs to the philosophers, who govern
the country with the help of warriors (also called guardians).
Plato’s main concern was with the way of life of these guard-
ians, since not only were the philosophers to be chosen from
among them, but they were also to control the rest of the pop-
ulation. He wanted to subordinate their life completely to the
interests of the state, and to organize it so as to exclude the
possibility of a split and the emergence of conflicting in-
terests.

The first means of achieving this was the abolition of pri-

37

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

vate property. The guardians were to own nothing but their
own bodies. Their dwellings could be entered by anybody
who wished to. They were to live in the republic like hired
laborers, serving only in return for food and no other reward.

For the same purpose the individual family was also abol-
ished. All the men and women in the guardian class were to
share their mates with all the others. Instead of marriage
there was to be brief, state-controlled sexual union, for the
purposes of physical satisfaction and the production of per-
fect progeny. To this end the philosophers were to yield to
distinguished guardians the right of more frequent sexual
union with the more beautiful women.

Children, from the moment of birth, would not know their
own fathers or even mothers. They were to be cared for com-
munally by all the women who happened to be lactating, and
the children passed around all the time. And the state would
take care of their subsequent upbringing. At the same time a
special role was assigned to art, which was to be purged
mercilessly in the name of the same goals. A work of art was
considered all the more dangerous, the more perfect it was
from the aesthetic point of view. The “fables of Hesiod and
Homer” were to be destroyed, and most of classical literature
with them — everything that might suggest the idea that the
gods were imperfect and unjust, that might induce fear or
gloom, or could inculcate disrespect for the authorities. New
myths were to be invented, on the other hand, to develop in
the guardians the necessary civic virtues.

Apart from this ideological supervision, the life of the
guardians was to be biologically controlled as well. This con-
trol began with the careful selection of parents able to pro-
vide the best progeny, and selection was based on the
achievements of agriculture. Children of unions not sanc-
tioned by the state, like those with physical imperfections,
were to be destroyed. The selection of adults was to be en-
trusted to medicine: doctors would treat some patients, allow
others to die, and kill the remainder.

(2) The philosophy of the medieval heretics was based on
the opposition between the spiritual and the material worlds

38

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

as two antagonistic and mutually exclusive categories. It
begot hostility toward the whole material world and in partic-
ular to all forms of social life. All these movements rejected
military service, oaths or litigation, personal submission to
ecclesiastical and secular authority, and some rejected mar-
riage and property. Some movements considered only mar-
riage a sin, but not adultery, so that this demand did not have
an ascetic character but aimed at the destruction of the fam-
ily. Many sects were accused by their contemporaries of
“free” or “sacred” love. One contemporary states, for in-
stance, that the heretics considered that “marital ties contra-
dict the laws of nature, since these laws demand that
everything should be held in common.” In precisely the
same way, the denial of private property was linked with its
renunciation in favor of the sect, and the common ownership
of property was fostered as an ideal. “In order to make their
teaching more attractive, they introduced common owner-
ship,” according to the record of one thirteenth-century trial
of some heretics.

These more radical aspects of the doctrine were usually
communicated only to the elite of the sect, the “perfected,”
who were sharply set apart from the basic mass of “believ-
ers.” But in times of social crisis the preachers and apostles
of the sect used to take their socialist ideas to the masses. As
a rule these ideas were mingled with calls for the destruction
of the whole existing order and above all of the Catholic
Church.

Thus, at the beginning of the thirteenth century in Italy the
Patarene movement, led by preachers from the sect of the
Apostolic Brethren, provoked a bloody three-year war. The
Apostolic Brethren taught that “in love everything must be
held in common — property and wives.” Those who joined
the sect had to hand all their property over for common use.
They thought of the Catholic Church as the whore of Baby-
lon and the pope as Antichrist, and they called for the murder
of the pope, bishops, priests, monks, and of all the godless.
Any action against the enemies of the true faith was pro-
claimed to be permissible.

39

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

A little over a hundred years later heretical sects domi-
nated the Taborite movement, whose raids terrorized central
Europe for a quarter of a century. Of them a contemporary
says: “In the Citadel or Tabor there is no Mine or Thine, ev-
erybody uses everything equally: all must hold everything in
common, and nobody must have anything separately, and he
who does is a sinner.” Their preachers taught: “Everything,
including wives, must be held in common. The sons and
daughters of God will be free, and there will be no marriage
as a union of just two — man and wife. . . . All institutions
and human decisions must be abolished, since none of them
was created by the Heavenly Father. . . . The priests’ houses
and all church property must be destroyed: churches, altars
and monasteries must be demolished. . . . All those who
have been elevated and given power must be bent like the
twigs of trees and cut down, burned in the stove like straw,
leaving not a root nor a shoot, they must be ground like
sheaves, the blood must be drained from them, they must be
killed by scorpions, snakes and wild animals, they must be
put to death.”

The great specialist on the history of the heresies, I. von
Dollinger, describes their social principles as follows:
“Every heretical movement that appeared in the Middle
Ages possessed, openly or secretly, a revolutionary character;
in other words, if it had come to power it would have had to
destroy the existing social order and produce a political and
social revolution. These Gnostic sects, the Catharists and Al-
bigensians, whose activities evoked severe and implacable
legislation against heresy and were bloodily opposed, were
socialists and communists. They attacked marriage, the fam-
ily, and property.”

These features appeared still more clearly in the heretical
movements after the Reformation, in the sixteenth century.
We shall adduce one example, the teaching of Niklas Storch,
leader of the so-called Zwickau prophets. 5 This teaching, as

5. A particular follower of his was Thomas Miintzer, who played such an im-
portant role in the Peasants' War.

40

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

described in a contemporary book, included the following
propositions:

“1) No marital connection, whether secret or open, is to be
observed. 2) On the contrary, any man can take wives when
the flesh demands it and his passions rise, and live with them
in bodily intimacy exactly as he pleases. 3) Everything is to
be held in common, since God sent all people into the world
equal. Similarly He gave equally to all the possession of the
earth, of fowl in the air and fish in the sea. 4) Therefore all
authorities, terrestrial and spiritual, must be dismissed once
and for all, or be put to the sword, for they live untrammeled,
they drink the blood and sweat of their poor subjects, they
guzzle and drink day and night. . . . So we must all rise, the
sooner the better, arm ourselves and fell upon the priests in
their cozy little nests, massacre them and wipe them out. For
if you deprive the sheep of their leader, you can do what you
like with them. Then we must fall upon the bloodsuckers,
seize their houses, loot their property and raze their castles to
the ground.”

(3) In 1516 appeared the book which started a new stage
in the development of socialist thought, Thomas More’s Uto-
pia. Being in the form of a description of an ideal state built
on socialist principles, it continued, after a two-thousand-
year break, the tradition of Plato, but in the completely dif-
ferent conditions of Western Europe of the Renaissance. The
most significant works to follow in this new current were The
City of the Sun by the Italian monk Tommaso Campanella
(1602), and The Law of Freedom in a Platform by his con-
temporary in the English revolution, Gerrard Winstanley
(1652).

From the end of the seventeenth century and in the eight-
eenth, socialist views spread more and more widely among
writers and philosophers and there appeared a veritable tor-
rent of socialist literature. The “socialist novel” came into
being, in which descriptions of socialist states were in-
tertwined with romance, travel and adventure (for example,
The History of the Savarambi by Verras; The Republic of

41

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

Philosophers by Fontenelle; The Southern Discovery by
Retif de la Bretonne). The number of new philosophical, so-
ciological and moral tracts preaching socialist views con-
stantly increased (for example, Meslier’s Testament; The
Law of Nature by Morelly; Thoughts on the Condition of Na-
ture by Mably; The True System by Deschamps; and pas-
sages in Diderot’s Supplement to the ‘‘Journey” of
Bougainville).

All these works agree in proclaiming as a basic principle
the common ownership of property. Most of them supple-
ment it with compulsory labor and bureaucratic rule (More,
Campanella, Winstanley, Verras, Morelly). Others depict a
country divided into small agricultural communes ruled by
their most experienced members or by old men (Meslier,
Deschamps). Many systems presuppose the existence of slav-
ery (More, Winstanley, Verras, Fenelon), and More and Win-
stanley regard it not only as an economic category but as a
means of punishment upholding the stability of society. They
offer frequent elaborations of the ways in which society will
subordinate the individuality of its members. Thus, More
speaks of a system of passes which would be essential not
only for journeys about the country but for walks outside the
town, and he prescribes identical clothing and housing for
everybody. Campanella has the inhabitants going about in
platoons and the greatest crime for a woman is to lengthen
her dress or paint her face. Morelly forbids all thought on
social or moral subjects. Deschamps assumes that all cul-
ture — art, science and even literacy — will wither away
spontaneously.

An important part is played in these works by consider-
ation of the way in which the family and sexual relations are
to change (Campanella, Retif, Diderot, Deschamps). Cam-
panella assumes absolute bureaucratic control in this domain.
Bureaucrats decide which man is to couple with which
woman, and when. The union itself is supervised by officials.
Children are reared by the state. Deschamps thinks that the
menfolk of a village will be the husbands of all the women,
and that the children will never know their parents.

42

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

A new view of human history was worked out. Medieval
mysticism had regarded it as a unified process of the revela-
tion of God in three stages. Now this was transformed into
the idea of a historical process subject to immanent laws and
likewise consisting of three stages, the last of which leads
inescapably to the triumph of the socialist ideal (e.g.,
Morelly, Deschamps).

Unlike the medieval heresies, which had attacked only the
Catholic religion, the socialist world view now became hos-
tile to any religion, and socialism fused with atheism. In
More, freedom of conscience is linked with the recognition
of pleasure as the highest objective in life. Campanella’s re-
ligion resembles a pantheistic deification of the cosmos. Win-
stanley’s attitude to religion is one of outright hostility, his
“priests” are merely the agitators and propagandists of the
system he describes. Deschamps considers that religion will
wither away, together with the rest of culture. But Meslier’s
Testament stands out for its aggressive attitude toward re-
ligion. In religion he sees the root of mankind’s misfortunes,
he considers it a patent absurdity, a malignant superstition.
He particularly loathes the person of Christ, whom he
showers with abuse in protracted tirades, even blaming him
because “he was always poor” and “he wasn’t resourceful
enough.”

The very end of the eighteenth century saw the first at-
tempt to put the socialist ideology which had been devel-
oped into practice. In 1786 in Paris a secret society called the
“Union of the Equal” was founded with the aim of preparing
a revolution. The plot was discovered and its participants ar-
rested, but their plans have been preserved in detail, thanks
to the documents published by the government and to the
memoirs of the plotters who survived.

Among the aims which the plotters had set themselves, the
first was the abolition of private property. The whole French
economy was to be fully centralized. Trade was to be sus-
pended and replaced by a system of state provisioning. All
aspects of life were to be controlled by a bureaucracy: “The
fatherland takes possession of a man from the day of his birth

43

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

and does not let him go until his very death.” Every man was
to be regarded to some extent as an official supervising both
his own behavior and that of others. Everybody was to be
obliged to work for the state, while “the uncooperative, the
negligent, and people who lead dissolute lives or set a bad
example by their absence of public spirit” were to be con-
demned to forced labor. For this purpose many islands were
to be turned into strictly isolated places of confinement.

Everybody was to be obliged to eat in communal refec-
tories. Moving about the country without official permission
was to be forbidden. Entertainments which were not avail-
able to everybody were categorically forbidden. Censorship
was to be introduced and publications “of a falsely denuncia-
tory character” were forbidden.

SOCIALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

We can now return to the basic topic of this essay. How-
ever short and disjointed our digression into the history of so-
cialism has been, one essential conclusion is beyond doubt:
socialism cannot be linked with a specific area, geographical
context, or culture. All its features, familiar to us from con-
temporary experience, are met in various historical, geo-
graphical and cultural conditions: in socialist states we
observe the abolition of private ownership of the means of
production , state control of everyday life, and the subordi-
nation of the individual to the power of the bureaucracy; in
socialist doctrines we observe the destruction of private
property, of religion , 6 of the family and of marriage , and
the introduction of wife-sharing.

This cannot be considered a new conclusion: many writers

6. The ideology of Plato's Republic appears to me to be irreligious, since
religion has no place in it. The medieval heresies had the appearance of
religious movements, but they were the swom enemies of that specific re-
ligion which the society around them preached. The murder of monks and
priests, defilement of churches and burning of crosses are characteristic of
their whole history. And this fundamental hatred that they all shared was the
nucleus out of which grew the other aspects of their philosophy.

44

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

have pointed to the socialist character of such societies as the
empire of the Incas, the Jesuit state, or the early states of
Mesopotamia, while the history of socialist doctrine has been
the subject of numerous monographs (some of them even by
socialists). Thus, in his book An Outline of the History of So-
cialism in Most Recent Times R. Y. Vipper writes: “one could
say of socialism that it is as old as human society.”

Curiously enough this observation has not been used to
evaluate socialism as a historical phenomenon. But its signif-
icance cannot be exaggerated. It calls for a complete review
and replacement of the established principles by which we
seek to understand socialism. If socialism is a feature of
nearly all historical periods and civilizations, then its origins
cannot be explained by any reasons connected with the spe-
cific features of a specific period or culture: neither by the
contradiction between the productive forces and industrial
relations under capitalism, nor by the psychological charac-
teristics of the Africans or Arabs. To try to understand it in
such a way hopelessly distorts the perspective, by squeezing
this great universal historical phenomenon into the unsuit-
able framework of economic, historical and racial categories.
I shall try below to approach the same questions from the op-
posite point of view: that socialism is one of those basic and
universal forces that have been in operation over the entire
span of human history.

A recognition of this, of course, in no way clarifies the his-
torical role of socialism. We can approach an understanding
of this role by trying to elucidate the aims which socialism it-
self avows. But here we run up against the fact that ap-
parently there are two answers to this question, depending
on whether we are talking about socialism as a state structure
or as a doctrine. Whereas the socialist states (modem and an-
cient alike) all base themselves on the one principle of the
destruction of private property, socialist doctrines advance a
number of other basic propositions over and above that, such
as the destruction of the family.

Here we meet two systems of views, one typical of “social-
ist theory,” the other typical of “socialist practice.” How do

45

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

we reconcile them and which is the true version of the aims
of socialism?

The following answer suggests itself (and has in some par-
ticular cases been given): the slogans about the destruction of
the family and marriage and — in their more radical form —
about wife-sharing, are necessary only for the destruction of
the existing social structures, for whipping up fanaticism and
rallying the socialist movements. These slogans cannot, in
themselves, be put into practice; indeed, that is not their
function — they are necessary only before the seizure of
power. The only vital proposition in all the socialist teach-
ings is the destruction of private property. And this indeed is
the true aim of the movement, and the only one which
should be taken into consideration in discussing the role of
socialism in history.

It seems to me that this point of view is essentially false.
First, because socialism, being an ideology capable of inspir-
ing grandiose popular movements and creating its own saints
and martyrs, cannot be founded on deception. It must be in-
fused with a deep inner unity. And on the contrary, history
can show us many examples of the striking candor and, in
some sense, honesty with which similar movements have
proclaimed their objectives. If there is any deception here it
is on the side of the opponents of these movements, who are
guilty of self-deception. How often they strive to persuade
themselves that the most extreme ideological propositions of
a movement are irresponsible demagogy and fanaticism.
Then they are perplexed to discover that actions which
seemed improbable on account of their radical nature are the
fulfillment of a program which was never concealed, but was
proclaimed thunderously in public and expounded in all the
known writings about it. We should note furthermore that all
the basic propositions of socialist doctrine can be found in
the works of such “detached” thinkers as Plato and Cam-
panella, who were not connected with any popular move-
ments. Evidently these principles arose in their writings as a
result of some inner logic and unity in socialist ideology.

46

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

which consequently cannot be tom into two parts, one to be
used in the seizure of power and then thrown away.

On the other hand, it is easy to see why socialist ideology
goes beyond the practice of the socialist states and outstrips
it The thinker or organizer behind a popular movement on
the one hand, and the socialist politician on the other, even
though they base themselves on a unified ideology, have to
solve different problems and work in different spheres. For
the creator or propounder of socialist doctrine it is important
to take the system to its uttermost logical conclusions, since it
is precisely in that form that they will be most accessible and
most contagious. But the head of state has to consider, above
all, how to retain power. He begins to feel pressures that
force him to move away from a program of rigid adherence to
ideological norms, the pursuit of which would jeopardize the
very existence of the socialist state. It is no coincidence that
for many decades the same phenomenon has been repeating
itself with such monotony, namely, that as soon as a socialist
movement comes to power (or at least to a share of power) its
less fortunate brothers anathematize it, accusing it of betray-
ing the socialist ideal — only to be accused of the same
should fortune smile on them.

But the dividing line that separates the slogans of the so-
cialist movements from the practice of the socialist states
does not run at all between the economic principles of social-
ism and its demands for the destruction of the family and
marriage. Indeed, the propositions relating to economics and
to changing industrial relations are also not realized with
equal degrees of radicalism in the various socialist states.

A dramatic attempt to embody these principles to the full
was made during the period of “war communism” in our
country. The aim then was to base the entire Russian econ-
omy on the direct exchange of goods, to reduce the market
and the role of money to nothing, to introduce the universal
conscription of industrial labor, to introduce collective work-
ing of the land, to replace trade in agricultural products by
confiscations and state distribution. The term “war commu-

47

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

nism” is itself misleading because it makes us think of war-
time measures evoked by the exceptional situation during
the civil war. But when this policy was being pursued that
term was not used: it was introduced after the civil war,
when “war communism” was renounced and recognized as a
temporary expedient.

It was precisely when the civil war had in feet been won,
and plans were being worked out for the governing of the
country in peacetime conditions, that Trotsky, on behalf of
the Central Committee, presented to the Ninth Congress of
the Party the program for the “militarization” of the econ-
omy. Peasants and workers were to be put in the position of
mobilized soldiers formed into “work units approximating to
military units” and provided with commanders. Everyone
was to feel that he was a “soldier of work who cannot be his
own master; if the order comes to transfer him he had to
comply; if he refuses he will be a deserter who is punished.”

To justify these plans Trotsky developed this theory: If
we accept at face value the old bourgeois prejudice — or
rather not the old bourgeois prejudice but the old bourgeois
axiom which has become a prejudice — that forced labor is
unproductive, then this would apply not only to the work
armies but to conscripted labor as a whole, to the basis of our
economic construction and to socialist organization in gen-
eral.” But it turns out that the “bourgeois axiom” is true only
when applied to feudalism and capitalism, but is inapplica-
ble to socialism! “We say: it is not true that forced labor is
unproductive in all circumstances and in all conditions.

After a year “war communism” and “militarization” were
replaced by the New Economic Policy as a result of devasta-
tion, hunger and rural uprisings. But the previous views were
not deposed. On the contrary, the NEP was declared to be
only a temporary retreat. And indeed, those very ideas con-
tinued to permeate Stalin’s activity and the pronouncements
of the opposition whom he was fighting. They were stated in
Stalin’s last work The Economic Problems of Socialism, in
which he called for a curtailment of trade and the circulation
of money, and their replacement by a system of barter.

48

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

We see a similar picture in the appearance in our country
of another basic feature of socialism, hostility to religion.
Nineteen thirty-two saw the inauguration of the “godless
five-year plan,” under which the last church was planned to
be closed by 1936, while by 1937 the name of God was no
longer supposed to be uttered in our country. In spite of the
unprecedented scale assumed by its religious persecutions,
the “godless five-year plan” was not fulfilled. The un-
foreseen readiness of believers to submit to any tortures, the
birth of an underground Orthodox Church and the stead-
fastness of believers of other faiths, the war, the tumultuous
rebirth of religious life in the territories occupied by the Ger-
mans — all these factors forced Stalin to give up his plan of
uprooting religion and to recognize its right to exist. But the
principle of hostility to religion remained and found expres-
sion again in the persecutions under Khrushchev.

Let us try to examine the socialist principles relating to the
family and marriage from the same point of view. The first
years after the revolution, the 1920s, again provide an ex-
ample of how attempts were made to put these principles
into practice.

The general Marxist views on the development of the fam-
ily, on which the practice of those years was based, are ex-
pounded in detail in Engels’s The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State. They boil down to the asser-
tion that the family is one of the “superstructures” erected on
the economic base. In particular, “monogamy arose as a con-
sequence of the concentration of great wealth in one person’s
hands — that person, moreover, being a man — and the need
to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and no-
body else.” In socialist society “the management of the indi-
vidual household will be turned into a branch of social work.
The care and upbringing of children will become a social
matter.” Thus the family will lose all its social functions,
which from the Marxist point of view means it will die out.
The Communist Manifesto proclaims the disappearance of
the “bourgeois family.” But by the twenties they were al-
ready managing without this epithet. Professor S. Y. Volfson,

49

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

in his lengthy work The Sociology of Marriage and the Fam-
ily (1929), foresaw that the family would lose the following
characteristics: its productive function (which it was already
losing under capitalism), its joint household (people would
take their meals communally), its child-rearing function (they
would be reared in state nurseries and kindergartens), its role
in the care of the aged, and the cohabitation of parents with
children and of married couples. “The family will be purged
of its social content, it will wither away. ...”

Practical measures were taken in accordance with these
ideological propositions. Thus, in his note “Ten Theses Con-
cerning Soviet Power,” Lenin proposed taking “unflinching
and systematic measures to replace individual housekeeping
by separate families with the joint feeding of large groups of
families.” And for decades afterward many people
languished in houses built in the twenties, where the com-
munal flats had no kitchens in anticipation of the gigantic
“factory-kitchens” of the future. Legislation simplified the
measures for entering into and dissolving marriage as much
as possible, so that registration became merely one of the
ways of confirming a marriage (together with its confirmation
in the courts, for example), while divorce was granted at the
immediate request of one of the partners. “To divorce in our
country is in some cases easier than to sign out in the house
register,” wrote one jurist. The family was viewed by leading
personalities of the time as an institution opposed to society
and the state. For instance, in her article entitled “Relations
between the Sexes and Class Morality,” Alexandra Kollontai
wrote: “For the working class, greater ‘fluidity’ and less fixity
in sexual relations fully corresponds to, and is even a direct
consequence of, the basic tasks of that class. In her opinion
woman was to be regarded as a representative of the revolu-
tionary class, “whose first duty is to serve the interests of the
class as a whole and not of a differentiated separate unit.

All these actions affected life in such a way that Lenin not
only did not welcome the destruction of the “bourgeois fam-
ily,” predicted by The Communist Manifesto, but said: “You
know, of course, about the famous theory that in Communist

50

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

society the satisfaction of sexual desires and of the need for
love is as simple and insignificant as drinking a glass of
water. This ‘glass of water’ theory has made our young peo-
ple frantic, absolutely frantic. It has become the downfall of
many of our young men and girls. Its adherents proclaim that
this is a Marxist theory. We don’t want that kind of Marxism”
(Clara Tsetkin, On Lenin). Indeed, in an inquiry conducted
by the Communist Sverdlov Institute (the famous “Sverd-
lovka”), only 3.7 percent of respondents indicated love as a
reason for their first intercourse. As a result, in the European
part of the USSR between 1924 and 1925 the proportion of
divorces to marriages increased by 130 percent. In 1924, the
number of divorces per thousand that took place during the
first year of marriage was 260 in Minsk, 197 in Kharkov and
159 in Leningrad. (Compare: 80 in Tokyo, 14 in New York,
11 in Berlin.) A society was founded called “Down with
Shame”; and “naked marches” anticipated the modem hip-
pies by half a century.

This historical precedent seems to us to show that in more
favorable circumstances the socialist principle of the destruc-
tion of the family might be realized in full, and marriage be
stripped of all its functions except intercourse (spiritual or
physical) between its members. Such a result may well come
about in the near future, particularly in view of the increas-
ing likelihood of government intervention in this sphere of
human relations. “We shall interfere in the private relations
between men and women only insofar as they disrupt our
social structure,” wrote Marx. But who is to say what disrupts
“our structure”? In the book by Professor Volfson which we
have already quoted, he writes, “. . . we have every reason
to believe that by the time socialism is established, child-
birth will have been removed from the powers of na-
ture. . . . But this, I repeat, is the only side of marriage
which, in our opinion, the socialist society will be able to
control.” Such measures were in fact used in Nazi Germany,
both to avert the appearance of progeny undesirable from the
point of view of the state, and in order to obtain the desired
progeny. For instance, the Lebensbom organization created

51

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

by the SS selected Aryan mates for unmarried women, and
there was propaganda in favor of a system of auxiliary wives
for racially pure men. And when China proclaimed the fol-
lowing norm for family life: “One child is indispensable, two
are desirable, three are impermissible,” one is entitled to
think that the term “impermissible” was in some way en-
forced.

It has nowadays become generally recognized that the
crisis of overpopulation is one of the basic dangers (and per-
haps the most frightening) that threaten mankind. Under
these conditions attempts by governments to assume control
of family relations may well be successful. Arnold Toynbee,
for instance, considers that government intervention in these
most delicate of human relations is inevitable in the very
near future, and that as a result the totalitarian empires of the
world will place cruel restrictions on human freedom in fam-
ily life, just as in economics and politics. (See his book An
Historian’s Approach to Religion. 1 ) In such a situation, and
particularly with the increasing impairment of the spiritual
values on which mankind could lean, the coming century is
bringing with it the very real prospect of a socialist transfor-
mation of family and marriage, a transformation whose spirit
has already been divined by Plato and Campanella.

These and other examples lead one to the conclusion that
socialist ideology contains a unified complex of ideas welded
together by internal logic. Of course, socialism takes on a va-
riety of forms in differing historical conditions, for it cannot
help mixing with other views. This is not surprising, and we
would meet the same in an analysis of any phenomenon of a
similar historical scale, for instance, religion. However, it is
possible to isolate a very distinct nucleus and to formulate
the “socialist ideal” that manifests itself either fully or in
part, with greater or lesser impurity, in a variety of situations.

Socialist theories have proclaimed this ideal in its most
logical and radical form. The history of socialist states shows
a chain of attempts to approximate to an ideal which has

7. Arnold Toynbee, An Historians Approach to Religion (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1965). — Trans.

52

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

never yet been fully realized, but which can be reconstructed
from those approximations. This reconstructible ideal of the
socialist states coincides with the ideal of socialist doctrine,
and in it we can see the unified “ socialist ideal.”

THE SOCIALIST IDEAL

The formulation of this ideal is now no longer a problem.

The basic propositions of the socialist world view have
often been proclaimed: the abolition of private property, re-
ligion and the family. One of the principles which is not so
often represented as fundamental, though it is no less wide-
spread, is the demand for equality, the destruction of the hi-
erarchy into which society has arranged itself. The idea of
equality in socialist ideology has a special character, which is
particularly important for an understanding of socialism. In
the more consistent socialist systems equality is understood
in so radical a way that it leads to a negation of the existence
of any genuine differences between individuals: “equality”
is turned into “equivalence.”

For instance, Lewis Mumford (in The Myth of the Ma-
chine) suggests that in their social structure the early states of
Mesopotamia and Egypt expressed the concept of a machine
whose components were the citizens of the state. In support
of his argument he refers to contemporary drawings in which
warriors or workers were depicted in a completely stereo-
typed manner, like the components of a machine.

The classic description of the socialist concept of equality
is “Shigalyovism” — the socialist utopia quoted by Dos-
toyevsky in The Possessed:

“The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As
soon as there is a family or love, there is a desire for property.
We shall throttle that desire: we shall unleash drunkenness,
scandal, denunciations; we shall unleash unprecedented de-
bauchery; we shall extinguish every genius in his infancy.
Everything must be reduced to the common denominator,
total equality.

53

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

“Each belongs to all, and all to each. All are slaves and
equal in slavery. In extreme cases it will mean defamation
and murder, but the main thing is equality. First there will
be a drop in the standard of education, in learning and talent.
A high level of learning and talent is accessible only to the
very brainy. We must abolish the brainy! The brainy have
always seized power and been despots. The brainy couldn’t
be anything other than despots and have always brought
more debauchery than good. We will execute or exile them.
We will cut out Cicero’s tongue, gouge out Copernicus’s
eyes, stone Shakespeare to death — that’s Shigalyovism!
Slaves must be equal: freedom and equality have never yet
existed without despotism, but there must be equality in the
herd, that’s Shigalyovism!”

Supporters of socialism usually declare The Possessed to be
a parody, a slander on socialism. However, we shall take the
risk of quoting a few passages in a similar vein:

“This communism, everywhere negating the individuality
of man, is merely the logical continuation of private property,
which equally negates individuality.”

“. . . it so overestimates the role and dominion of mate-
rial property that it wants to destroy everything that cannot
become the possession and private property of the masses; it
wants to eliminate talent by force. . .

“. . . finally, this movement, which aims to oppose to pri-
vate property the universal ownership of private property,
expresses itself in a completely animal form when to mar-
riage (which is, of course, a certain form of exclusive private
property) it opposes the communal ownership of women, as a
result of which woman becomes a low form of social
property.”

“In the way that a woman abandons marriage for the realm
of general prostitution, so the whole world of wealth, that is,
of man’s objectified essence, passes from the condition of
exclusive marriage with a private owner to general prostitu-
tion with the collective.”

I should very much like the reader to try to guess the au-
thor of these thoughts before looking at the answer: K. Marx,

54

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

sketches for The Holy Family (published posthumously). To
calm the reader let me hasten to qualify this: Marx sees com-
munism in this way only “in its initial stages.” Further on,
Marx depicts “communism as the positive destruction of pri-
vate property,” in which he scientifically foresees quite other
features. According to this book, for instance, every object
will become “a humanified object or an objectified human”
and “man assumes his many-sided essence in many-sided
ways, that is, as an integral person.”

There was also a socialist movement which endowed
equality with such extraordinary significance that it derived
its title, the “Union of the Equal,” from it Here is their in-
terpretation of this concept:

“We want real equality or death, that’s what we want.

“For its sake we would agree to anything, we would sweep
everything away in order to retain just this. Let all the arts
vanish if necessary, so long as we are left with genuine
equality.”

The way in which equality is understood brings us to a
striking correlation between socialism and religion. They
consist of identical elements which, in their different con-
texts, possess opposite meanings. “There is a similarity be-
tween them in their diametrical opposition,” says
Berdyayev 8 of Christianity and Marxism. The idea of human
equality is also fundamental to religion, but it is achieved in
contact with God, that is, in the highest sphere of human ex-
istence. Socialism, as is clearly evident from the examples
above, aims to establish equality by the opposite means of
destroying all the higher aspects of the personality. It is this
concept of equality to which the socialist principles of com-
munal property and the destruction of the family relate, and
it also explains the hatred of religion which saturates social-
ist ideology.

The socialist ideal, that basic complex of ideas which for
many thousands of years has lain at the foundation of socialist

8. Nikolai Berdyayev (1874-1948), ex-Marxist, later a religious philosopher
and one of the chief contributors to Vekhi. Expelled from the Soviet Union
in 1922 . — Trans.

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SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

ideology, can now be formulated: (1) equality and the de-
struction of hierarchy; (2) the destruction of private property;
(3) the destruction of religion; (4) the destruction of the
family.

Dostoyevsky was by no means parodying when he drew
his portrait:

Do away at last with the nobles.

Do away with the tsar as well,

Take the land for common owners,

Let your vengeance forever swell
Against church and marriage and family,

And all the old world’s villainy , 9

WHERE IS SOCIALISM TAKING US?

We concluded above that there exists a unified ideal pro-
claimed by socialist doctrine and implemented — with more
or less faithfulness — in the socialist states. Our task now is
to try to understand what essential changes in life its full
implementation would produce. In doing so we will automat-
ically arrive at a description of the aim of socialism and its
role in history.

The various types of socialist system and the life of the so-
cialist states give us an opportunity to imagine how these
general propositions would be concretely embodied. We get
a picture which, although frightening and apparently strange
at first sight, has an integral, inner logic and is thoroughly
plausible. We must imagine a world in which every man and
woman is “militarized” and turned into a soldier. They live
in barracks or hostels, work under commanders, feed in com-
munal refectories, and spend their leisure hours only with
their own detachment. They need permits to go out in the

9. This poem, “A Noble Personality,” is quoted in The Possessed as a Nihil-
ist leaflet. The imitation turned out to be so accurate that a few years after
the novel’s publication these lines found their way to the Third Department
in the form of a leaflet which really was being distributed by Nihilists.

56

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

street at night, to go for a walk outside the town or to travel to
another town. They are all dressed identically, so that it is
hard to tell the men from the women, and only the uniforms
of the commanders stand out. Childbirth and relations be-
tween the sexes are under the absolute control of the authori-
ties. The individual family, marriage and the familial rearing
of children do not exist. Children do not know their parents
and are brought up by the state. All that is permitted in art
are works which contribute to the education of the citizens in
the spirit required by the state, while all the old art that does
not conform to this is destroyed. Speculation is forbidden in
the realms of philosophy, morality and particularly religion,
of which all that remains is compulsory confession to one’s
chiefs and the adoration of a deified head of state. Disobedi-
ence is punished by slavery, which plays an important role in
the economy. There are many other punishments and the
culprit is obliged to repent and thank his punishers. The peo-
ple take part in executions (by expressing their public ap-
proval or stoning the offender.) Medicine also plays a part in
the elimination of undesirables.

None of these features has been taken from the novels of
Zamyatin , 10 Huxley or Orwell: they have been borrowed
from familiar socialist systems or the practice of socialist
states, and we have selected only the typical ones which are
met with in several variants.

What will be the consequences of the establishment of
such a system, in what direction will it take human history?
In asking this question I am not asking to what extent a so-
cialist society will be able to maintain the standard of living,
secure the population’s food, clothing and housing, or protect
it from epidemics. These admittedly complex questions do
not form the basic problem, which is really that the establish-
ment of a social order fully embodying the principles of so-

10. Evgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937), outstanding modernist writer. Initially a
Communist, he dissented strongly from Soviet methods of government after
the revolution and left the Soviet Union in 1931 after personally appealing to
Stalin. He is the author of We, the first (and best) anti-utopian novel of the
twentieth century and the inspiration for Orwell’s 1984 . — Trans.

57

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

cialism will lead to a complete alteration in man’s relation to
life and to a radical break in the structure of human individ-
uality.

One of the fundamental characteristics of human society is
the existence of individual relations between people. As the
excellent behaviorist researches of the last decades have
shown, we are dealing here with a phenomenon of very an-
cient, prehuman origin. There are many kinds of social ani-
mals, and the societies they form are of two types: the
anonymous and the individualized. In the first (for instance,
in a shoal of herrings) the members do not know each other
individually, and they are interchangeable in their relations.
In the second (for example, a gaggle of wild geese) relations
arise in which one member plays a special role in the life of
another and cannot be replaced. The presence of such rela-
tions is, in a certain sense, the factor which determines indi-
viduality. And the destruction of these individual relations is
one of the proclaimed goals of socialism — between hus-
bands and wives and between parents and children. It is
striking that among the forces which, according to the behav-
iorists, support these individualized societies we find those
of hierarchy and of territory. Likewise in human society hier-
archy and property, above all one’s own house and plot of
land, help to strengthen individuality: they secure the indi-
vidual’s indisputable place in life and create a feeling of in-
dependence and personal dignity. And their destruction
figures among the basic aims advanced by socialism.

Of course, only the very foundation of human society has a
biological origin of that kind. The basic forces which promote
the development of individuality are specifically human.
These are religion, morality, the feeling of personal participa-
tion in history, a sense of responsibility for the fate of man-
kind. Socialism is hostile to these too. We have already
quoted many examples of the hatred of religion which char-
acterizes socialist doctrine and socialist states. In the most
vivid socialist doctrines we usually find assertions that his-
tory is directed by factors independent of the human will,
while man himself is the product of his social environ-

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

ment — doctrines which remove the yoke of responsibility
which religion and morality place on man.

And finally, socialism is directly hostile to the very phe-
nomenon of human individuality. Thus, Fourier says that the
basis of the future socialist structure will be the at present
unknown feeling (“passion”) of unit£isme. In contemporary
life he could only indicate the antithesis of this feeling:
“This disgusting inclination has been given various names
by specialists: moralists call it egoism, ideologists call it the
%’ a new term which, however, contributes nothing new and
is only a useless paraphrase of egoism.”

Marx, noticing that even after the acquisition of democratic
freedom society remains Christian, concluded that it is still
“flawed” in that “. . . man — not man in general but each in-
dividual man — considers himself a sovereign, higher being,
and this is man in his uncultivated, nonsocial aspect in an ac-
cidental form of existence, as he is in life. . . .”

And even in Bebel, in whom participation in the parlia-
mentary game and the enticing hopes of thus obtaining
power so moderated all the radicalism of socialist ideology, we
suddenly discover this picture: “The difference between the
‘lazy’ and the ‘industrious,’ between the foolish and the wise
cannot exist any more in the new society, since what we
mean by those concepts will not exist either.”

The fact that socialism leads to the suppression of individ-
uality has frequently been remarked on. But this feature has
usually been regarded as just a means for the attainment of
some end: the development of the economy, the good of the
whole people, the triumph of justice or universal material
well-being. Such, for instance, was the point of view of
S. Bulgakov, who juxtaposed socialism with the first tempta-
tion of Christ: in “turning stones to bread” socialism tried to
limit all mankind’s goals to the solution of purely material
pioblems. In my opinion the whole history of socialism con-
tradicts this view. Socialist doctrines, for instance, show sur-
prisingly little interest in the immediate conquest of injustice
and poverty. They condemn all efforts in this area as
“bourgeois philanthropy,” “reformism” and “Uncle Tom-

59

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

ism,” and the solution of these problems is postponed until
the triumph of the socialist ideal. As always, Nechaev 11 is
more candid than anyone: “If you don’t watch out the gov-
ernment will suddenly dream up a reduction in taxation or
some similar blessing. This would be a real disaster, because
even under present conditions the people are moving gradu-
ally upward, and if their penury is eased by even a fraction, if
they manage to get just one cow more, they will regress by
decades and all our work will be wasted. We must, on the
contrary, oppress the people at every opportunity like, shall
we say, sweatshop owners.” And so we come to the opposite
point of view, that the economic and social demands of so-
cialism are the means for the attainment of its basic aim , the
destruction of individuality . And many of the purely eco-
nomic principles preached by socialists (such as planning)
have been shown by experience not to be organically con-
nected with socialism at all — which, in fact, has turned out
to be badly adapted to their existence.

What will be the effect on life of a change in the spiritual
atmosphere such that human individuality is destroyed in all
its most essential forms?

Such a revolution would amount to the destruction of Man,
at least in the sense that has hitherto been contained in this
concept. And not just an abstract destruction of the concept,
but a real one too. It is possible to point to a model for the sit-
uation we are considering in an analogous process which
took place on a much smaller scale, namely, the clash be-
tween primitive peoples and European civilization. Most
ethnographers think that the main reason for the disappear-
ance of many indigenous peoples was not their extermination
by Europeans, not the diseases or alcoholism brought by the
whites, but the destruction of their religious ideas and rit-
uals, and of the way their life was arranged to give meaning
to their existence. Even when Europeans seemed to be help-

li. Sergei Nechaev (1847-1882), anarchist, Nihilist and one of Russia s first
professional revolutionaries. In 1873 he was convicted for organizing the
group murder of an innocent fellow-conspirator and was imprisoned in the
Peter-Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. Many of his ideas were subsequently
taken over by the Bolsheviks.— Trans.

60

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

ing by improving their living conditions, organizing medical
aid, introducing new types of crops and farm animals or ob-
structing tribal wars, the situation did not change. The na-
tives became generally apathetic, they aged prematurely, lost
their will to live, died of diseases which previously they had
survived with ease. The birthrate plummeted and the popu-
lation dwindled.

It seems obvious that a way of life which fully embodies
socialist ideals must have the same result, with the sole dif-
ference that the much more radical changes will bring a more
universal result, the withering away of all mankind, and its

death.

There appears to be an inner organic link here: socialism
aims at the destruction of those aspects of life which form the
true basis of human existence. That is why we think that the
death of mankind is the inescapable logical consequence of
socialist ideology and simultaneously a real possibility,
hinted at in every socialist movement and state with a degree
of clarity which depends on its fidelity to the socialist ideal.

THE MOTIVE FORCE OF SOCIALISM

If that is the objective conclusion toward which socialism
is moving, what then is its subjective aim? What inspires all
these movements and gives them their strength? The picture
that emerges from our deliberations has all the appearances
of a contradiction: socialist ideology, whose realization in full
leads to the destruction of mankind, has for thousands of
years inspired great philosophers and raised great popular
movements. Why have they not been aware of the debacle
that is the true end of socialism? And if aware, why have they
not recoiled from it? What error of thought, what aberration
of the feelings can propel people along a path whose end is
death?

It seems to me that the contradiction here is not real, but
only apparent, as often happens when someone makes a
proposition in an argument which seems so obvious that no-

61

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

body pays any attention to it, yet it is this unnoticed proposi-
tion that embodies the contradiction. In this particular
argument the obvious element seems to be the proposition
that the fatal nature of socialism has never been noticed, but
the closer you become acquainted with socialist philosophy,
the clearer it becomes that there is no error here, no aberra-
tion. The organic connection between socialism and death is
subconsciously or half-consciously felt by its followers with-
out in the least frightening them at all. On the contrary, this
is what gives the socialist movements their attraction and
their motive force. This cannot of course be proved logically,
it can be verified only by checking it against socialist litera-
ture and the psychology of socialist movements. And here we
are obliged to limit ourselves to a few heterogeneous ex-
amples. . .

If Nechaev, for instance, in calling on young people to join
the revolution, also warned them that “the majority of the
revolutionaries will perish without trace — that s the pros-
pect” (one of those rare prophecies that was realized in full),
what attraction did he have for them? He of all people could
not appeal to God, or to the immortal soul, or to patriotism, or
even to a sense of honor, since “in order to become a good
socialist” he proposed the renunciation of “all feelings of
kinship, friendship, love, gratitude, and even honor itself.
In the proclamations issued by him and Bakunin 12 one can
see quite clearly what it was that attracted them and infected
the others: the urge for death and “unbridled destruction,
“absolute and extraordinary.” A whole generation of contem-
porary revolutionaries was doomed to perish in that confla-
gration, a generation poisoned by the most squalid living
conditions,” fit only to destroy and be destroyed. That was
Bakunin’s sole aim. Not only were positive ideals absent, it
was forbidden even to think about them: “We refuse point-
blank to work out the future conditions of life . . . we do not

12. Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), leading Russian revolutionary thinker of
the nineteenth century and founder of Anarchism. Was a rival ol Marx tor the
leadership of the early Communist movement

62

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

wish to deceive ourselves with the dream that we shall have
enough strength left for creation.”

In the USSR our generation well remembers how we
marched in columns of young pioneers and sang with fervor
(as did the young people in the civil war, and the Red Guards
before us):

Bravely shall we enter battle
On behalf of Soviet power
And all together we shall die
In this struggle of ours.

And the greatest fervor, the greatest elan was evoked by that
phrase “all together we shall die.”

Or here is how three of the most famous socialist writers of
the last century imagined the future of the human race: Saint-
Simon foresaw that mankind would perish as a result of the
planet’s drying up. Fourier thought the same because the
earth would “stop rotating on its axis and the poles would
topple down to the equator,” while Engels thought it would
be because the planet would cool down.

These can hardly be regarded as the fruits of scholarly
minds forced to bow to the truth, however drastic it might ap-
pear to be. Moreover, these three prophecies cannot all be
true . 13

Religion predicts the end of our world too, but only after
the attainment of its ultimate aim, which also supplies the
meaning of its history. But socialism (on the principle of the
similarity of diametrical opposites) attributes the end of man-
kind to some external accident and thus deprives its whole
history of any meaning.

In die near future the leaders of the socialist movements
will look forward with surprising sangfroid, and occasionally

13. But in spite of his different arguments, Engels had a high opinion of
Fourier’s idea that “the whole of humanity is fated to disappear”: “This idea
of Fourier’s has occupied a similar place in the science of history to that oc-
cupied in the natural sciences by Kant’s idea of the eventual destruction of
the globe.”

63

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

even with open satisfaction, to the destruction, if not of all
mankind, then of the greater part of it. In our time Chairman
Mao has already stated his conviction that the death of half
the population of the globe would not be too high a price
for the victory of socialism throughout the world. Similarly,
at the beginning of the fourteenth century, for example, the
leader of the Patarene movement in Italy, Dolcino, predicted
the imminent destruction of all mankind, relying on the au-
thority of the prophet Isaiah: “And the remnant will be quite
small and insignificant.”

There are many indications that a tendency to self-destruc-
tion is not foreign to mankind: we have the pessimistic re-
ligion of Buddhism, which postulates as the ultimate aim of
mankind its fusion with the Nothing, with Nirvana; the phi-
losophy of Lao-Tse, in which the ultimate aim is dissolution
in nonbeing; the philosophical system of Hartmann, who pre-
dicted the deliberate self-destruction of mankind; the appear-
ance at various times of scientific and philosophical trends
setting out to prove that man is a machine, though their
proofs are in each case completely different and all they have
in common is their (totally unscientific), urge to establish this
fact.

Finally, the fundamental role of the urge to self-destruction
has long since been indicated by biology. Thus, Freud con-
sidered it (under the title of the death instinct, or Thanatos)
one of the two basic forces which determine man's psychic
life.

And socialism, which captures and subordinates millions of
people to its will in a movement whose ideal aim is the death
of mankind, cannot of course be understood without the as-
sumption that those same ideas are equally applicable to so-
cial phenomena, that is, that among the basic forces
influencing historical development is the urge to self-
destruction, the human death instinct.

An understanding of this urge as a force analogous to in-
stinct also enables us to explain some specific features of so-
cialism. The manifestations of an instinct are always
connected with the sphere of the emotions; the performance

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

of an instinctive action evokes a deep feeling of satisfaction
and emotional uplift, and in man a feeling of inspiration and
happiness. This can account for the attractiveness of the
socialist world view, that condition of ardor and of spiritual
uplift, and that inexhaustible energy which can be met in the
leaders and members of the socialist movements. These
movements have the quality of infectiousness which is typi-
cal of many instincts.

Conversely, understanding, the capacity for learning and
for intellectual evaluation of a situation, are almost incompat-
ible with instinctual action. In man the influence of instinct
as a rule lowers the critical faculty: arguments directed
against the aims which the instinct is striving to achieve are
not only not examined but are seen as base and contempt-
ible. All these features are found in the socialist world view.

At the beginning of this essay we pointed out that social-
ism as it were repels rational consideration. It has often been
remarked that to reveal contradictions in socialist teachings
in no way reduces their attractive force, and socialist ideolo-
gists are not in the least scared of contradictions.

Only in the context of socialism, for instance, could there
arise in the nineteenth century — and find numerous fol-
lowers — such a doctrine as Fourier’s in which a basic role is
played by the notion of the sexual life of the planets (the
North Pole of the earth, bearer of male fluid, unites with the
South Pole, bearer of the female fluid). Fourier predicted that
in the future socialist system the water of the seas and oceans
would acquire the taste of lemonade, and that the present
creatures of the sea would be replaced by antiwhales and an-
tisharks, which would convey cargoes from one continent to
another at colossal speed . 14 This will seem less surprising,
however, if we recall that it is only just over two hundred
years since socialist ideology assumed a rational exterior.
And it was very recently (on the macrohistorical time scale)
that socialism, in the form of Marxism, exchanged this exte-
rior for a scientific one. The brief period of “scientific social-

14. As Engels said, here “purely Gallic wit combines with great depth of
analysis.”

65

SOCIALISM IN OUR PAST AND FUTURE

ism” is ending before our eyes, the scientific wrapping no
longer increases the attraction of socialist ideas and socialism
is casting it off. Thus Herbert Marcuse (in “The End of Uto-
pia”) says that for the modem “avant-garde Left” Fourier is
more relevant than Marx precisely because of his greater uto-
pianism. He calls for the replacement of the development of
socialism “from utopia to science” by its development “from
science to utopia.”

All this shows that the force which manifests itself in so-
cialism does not act through reason, but resembles an in-
stinct. This accounts for the inability of socialist ideology to
react to the results of experience, or, as behaviorists would
say, its inability to learn. A spider, spinning its web, will
complete all the six thousand four hundred movements nec-
essary even if its glands have dried up in the heat and will
produce no silk. How much more dramatic is the example of
the socialists, with the same automatism constructing for the
nth time their recipe for a society of equality and justice: it
would seem that for them the numerous and varied prece-
dents which have always led to one and the same result do
not exist. The experience of many thousands of years is re-
jected and replaced by cliches from the realm of the irratio-
nal, such as the claim that all the different socialisms of today
and yesterday or created in a different part of the globe were
not the real thing, and that in the special conditions of “our”
socialism everything will be different, and so on and so forth.

That is the explanation for the longevity of that mass of
prejudices and catchphrases surrounding socialism, like the
identification of socialism with social justice or the belief in
its scientific character. They are accepted without the least
verification and take root in people’s minds like absolute
truths.

At our present turning point the depth and complexity of
the problem facing mankind is becoming increasingly appar-
ent. Mankind is being opposed by a powerful force which
threatens its very existence and at the same time paralyzes its
most reliable tool — reason.

66

Contemporary Socioeconomic Systems
and Their Future Prospects

MIKHAIL AGURSKY

Many people believe that there are only two possible socio-
economic systems — the capitalist one in Western countries
and the socialist one in Communist countries, and that all
today’s conflicts merely reflect the contradiction between
them. This view is mistaken.

In fact there are perhaps more resemblances than dif-
ferences between these two systems, the reason being the
very existence of large-scale industry as the economic base of
both.

Once it exists, whatever system directs it, large industry
becomes an active influence on society in its own right. This
applies particularly to such branches of mass production as
automobiles, light industry, construction and electronics.

The first duty of an industry like the automobile industry is
to satisfy the primary demand for automobiles. Once this
need has been met, however, the industry faces the danger of
a decline. This of course is catastrophic, for if there are no or-
ders, production must stop. The automobile industry must as-
sure itself of a steady stream of orders to survive. A switch to
some product other than automobiles is impracticable, first,
because the industry’s plant is purpose-built for a narrow
range of products and replacing it would require vast capital

67

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

investment, not to mention replanning the factory, and sec-
ond, because the production workers possess particular skills
and would have to be completely retrained. Switching from
one product to another very different one is obviously all but
impossible. The vast expenditure involved would make pro-
duction uneconomic for a long time, and the enterprise
would also not be able to compete with firms already manu-
facturing similar goods. Besides, it would be unwise to dis-
continue the manufacture of automobiles altogether, since
some residual demand for them would remain and it would
in any case recover sufficiently once the first generation of
automobiles was worn out. All this points to a different solu-
tion to the question, namely, stimulating demand.

Advertising helps to do this by creating a psychological at-
mosphere which encourages people to change their au-
tomobiles long before they are worn out. In the United States
and other countries the ownership of the latest model is a
status symbol. Backed by advertising, the automobile in-
dustry has reached gigantic proportions and has stimulated
the growth of related industries such as metallurgy, toolmak-
ing, and so on. Thus the stimulation of demand becomes vital
to the existence not only of the automobile industry but of
the entire national economy, since its decline would lead to a
general economic crisis.

In his book Future Shock Alvin Toffler enumerates with
excessive relish other examples of the stimulation of demand
in various industries by boosting the output of disposables
and throw-away goods — clothing, bail-point pens, diapers,
food packaging, and so on. He quotes examples of the short-
ening of the life-span of dwelling houses so as to increase the
turnover of the building industry; the built-in obsolescence
of toys; the pharmaceutical industry’s deliberately reducing
the useful life of its drugs so as to replace them with new
ones. A whole new industry has sprung up manufacturing fun
goods such as badges with pornographic jokes with an ex-
pected life of only a few days.

Precisely the same stimulation of consumption is practiced
in Communist countries as in the West, though the process is

68

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

slower and less efficient. Thus the USSR is being drawn par-
ticularly strongly into the orbit of consumption. Although the
need for automobiles is far from being satisfied as yet, at the
rate new foreign-built factories are going up it can safely be
assumed that the saturation point is not far off (especially
considering the inadequacy of the road and service net-
works). Recent years have seen a revolution in housing and
furniture in the USSR and we are already replacing the third
generation of television sets. Fashion, a powerful stimulus to
the working capacity of light industry, is acquiring more and
more importance in the economy of the USSR. Under Soviet
conditions, however, light industry is at a disadvantage, since
our tastes for a long time now have been set by the West.
Inflexible Soviet industry, not being the arbiter of Western
fashion, is unable to keep abreast of it. This results in vast
surpluses of goods which nobody wants because they have
gone out of fashion.

As in the West, various kinds of fashion and leisure prod-
ucts are acquiring an important role in Communist econo-
mies, since they stimulate consumption and require
advanced industrial processes. As in the West, planned obso-
lescence is widely practiced. Here too disposables are be-
coming widespread.

Both systems aim for constant growth in the national prod-
uct and an equal expansion of consumption. The entire eco-
nomic — and therefore also social — stability of both systems
becomes dependent on industry’s always working to capac-
ity, and the stimulation of demand becomes vital to their ex-
istence.

There are, however, significant differences between the
two systems. First of all, Communist economies, the USSR’s
especially, are much less efficient than Western economies.
This is because the members of the ruling state-monopoly
corporation have no direct interest in the results of industrial
performance, their material standard of living being assured
regardless of the general state of the economy. A similar ten-
dency is observable in John Kenneth Galbraith’s technostruc-
tures (as he calls the largest monopolistic conglomerates

69

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

active in the Western economic system). Indeed, some of the
failings of Communist economies are already beginning to
become evident in these monopolistic conglomerates. Gal-
braith asserts that their only aim is survival. But where com-
petition is open, the survival of such conglomerates depends
basically on economic factors, which inevitably affects the
welfare of their members — as P. Sweezy rightly pointed out
in his review of Galbraith (JSIew York Review of Books,
1973, No. 18). 1

Under the economic conditions of communism, however,
the survival of even such a senior member of the ruling cor-
poration as a factory manager may be determined solely by
noneconomic factors, since his appointment and tenure of of-
fice depend mainly on his relations with the ruling party ap-
paratus. Given this reciprocal bond even an unsuccessful or
incompetent manager can maintain his status, if for example,
he does some favors, even personal favors, for his superiors
in the corporation. This tendency is reinforced by the cor-
poration’s caste system, whereby even a failed member is not
dismissed from the staff but is, as a rule, transferred to some
other responsible post.

The absence of proper incentives for all the echelons of
this corporation makes the technological backwardness of the
Communist countries inevitable. Yet how can this be recon-
ciled with the obvious successes of Soviet military technol-
ogy? The fact is that this success is determined by political,
not economic, factors, and the resultant vast expenditure on
the armaments industry and the meticulous quality control of
military hardware carried out by the military themselves, in-
dependently of the manufacturing process. If the armaments
industry’s conditions were applied to civil industry, the So-
viet budget would collapse under the burden of additional
expenditure. Also, military production is strictly supervised
by the government itself.

The second significant difference between the two systems

1. See Paul H. Sweezy, review of Economics and the Public Purpose by John
Kenneth Galbraith in the New York Review of Books, vol. 20, no. 18 (November
15, 1973). P- 3-— Trans.

70

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

is to be found in the role of competition. Although there is no
free competition between enterprises in Communist coun-
tries, since their market is guaranteed, nevertheless competi-
tion is still extremely important. There is first of all personal
competition for status among the members of the ruling cor-
poration, which can be very savage. Second, the Communist
economy’s pace is set not by internal but by international
competition, spurred by the urge for survival and expansion,
considerations of international prestige, and so on. Were it
not for this competition, Communist economies would be
doomed to stagnate completely.

There is one more important difference between the two
systems. In the West the prices of goods fall as demand rises,
but in Communist countries the prices of such goods imme-
diately rise. This increase in prices is due to the absolute mo-
nopoly of trade which in fact is one of the laws of Communist
economics and one reason why Communist countries always
have a lower standard of living than Western countries (al-
though it is not the sole factor contributing to a lowering of
the standard of living).

Another characteristic of Communist economies is that
they do not allow unemployment. Everybody is afforded the
minimum means of survival, and in that sense they enjoy
greater security, although their minimum is much lower than
that prevailing in advanced Western countries.

Despite their differences, the two systems are closely in-
terconnected within the framework of the overall world econ-
omy. Communist countries, the USSR and China most of all,
find it hard to compete in world markets with manufactured
goods because of the low quality of their products. Therefore
they have turned into exporters of raw materials, importing
machine tools, consumer goods and even foodstuffs from the
West in exchange. Besides this, competition between the two
systems has become one of the most important stimuli of con-
sumption growth. The West, driven by fear of revolution,
tries among other things to encourage its entire population to
consume as much as possible and to raise its standard of liv-
ing. At the same time the Communist countries, in search of

7 1

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

the prestige essential to their future expansion, strive to
boost the consumption of their own peoples.

It is possible to conclude that the Communist economy is
no more than the next stage in the development of the West-
ern economic system, where production is concentrated
solely in the hands of the state.

Both these systems are profoundly flawed and, unless some
means of averting it can be found, will swiftly plunge man-
kind into catastrophe. First of all, both systems are rapacious
plunderers of the natural resources that alone can maintain
the hypertrophic growth in consumption that is observable at
present. Until recently these resources seemed inexhaust-
ible, but now, particularly in the light of the energy crisis,
this naive view has been changed. Even earlier it was
becoming increasingly apparent that natural resources, espe-
cially soil, water, fuel, air, and so on, were by no means infi-
nite, and that unfettered growth in consumption would
inevitably exhaust them far sooner than the natural needs of a
growing population would. After all, the disappearance of
just one resource vital to human life, even if all the others
were plentifully available, would be sufficient to cause a ca-
tastrophe, for resources are not interchangeable.

Western countries, the United States especially, are said to
use up natural resources like a “drunken sailor,” but this
applies even more to the USSR, where vast resources are
pointlessly expended as a result of our reigning improvi-
dence. For example, quantities of smelted metals are either
thrown out into the street to rust or used in structures that are
far heavier than necessary. Large quantities of agricultural
produce are left to rot every year. Vast amounts of fuel are
pointlessly burned. The senseless waste of Soviet resources
not only continues but is increasing all the time; it has be-
come a national habit.

But the USSR’s resources are quickly being depleted, not
only for these reasons, but also because it has become the
largest supplier of raw materials to other countries. It is the
presence of these vast resources, which the USSR can ex-

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CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

change for machine tools, consumer goods and foodstuffs,
that allows it to compete with the West and generally support
a large but inefficient economy.

It was its timber, ores, furs, and so on, that allowed the
USSR to industrialize in the 1920s and 1930s when these
goods were bartered for essential equipment from the United
States and Germany. The world’s natural resources are per-
haps adequate to feed the growing population for the fore-
seeable future, but they are by no means sufficient to feed an
exaggerated race for consumption. Unless the growth of con-
sumption is checked, mankind will soon be faced with a criti-
cal shortage of resources. The symptoms of such a crisis are
already apparent, but it will deepen further as Asia, Africa
and Latin America are drawn into the sphere of expanded
consumption.

Another incorrigible defect of the existing systems is their
growing political instability as a result of the West’s increas-
ing dependence on external commodities markets and
sources of raw materials, and the Communist countries’ drive
to expand. The saturation of their own markets leads the
Western countries to seek new markets indiscriminately, so
as to keep their industry working. This makes them increas-
ingly dependent on raw material supplies from other coun-
tries, for the most part those that possess no manufacturing
industry of their own. Therefore, if some state poses a threat
to peace and freedom, business circles, fearing the loss of
markets or sources of raw material, begin to put pressure on
their governments to soften their policies toward that state.
This is why Western countries, despite their own enormous
potential, are incapable of resisting dictatorships and totali-
tarian regimes.

These were the roots of the Munich Agreement of 1938,
when the leaders of Britain and France, under pressure from
big business, opened the way to National Socialist aggression
against the entire world. Earlier the business world had been
instrumental in bringing about the rebirth of German indus-
try, which was then used by the Nazis exclusively for mili-
tary purposes. Western business circles were led to pursue

73

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

this suicidal policy by their constitutional inability to take a
long-term view of either their national interests or their own
individual interests, or to make any concessions in the short
term.

They are doing exactly the same thing now. With the unex-
pected support of frivolous social-democratic youth groups,
on whom the word “socialism” displayed by the Eastern
block (and by the Berlin Wall, too) has a hypnotic effect,
business circles pressured West Germany’s ruling Social
Democratic party into elevating the existing status quo in
Germany to the rank of a juridically accepted fact, in the
meantime making maximum concessions to the USSR and
East Germany, which latterly has become the focus of milita-
rism in Europe. The events leading up to Brandt’s resigna-
tion showed this eloquently enough. The German
nation — and mankind as a whole — will pay dearly for the
actions of these business circles. The West German business-
men and industrialists, however, have been rewarded with
free entry to the East European and Soviet markets.

Another instance of how the selfish interests of business
circles can conflict with national and world interests is the
shortsighted policy pursued by French governments under
de Gaulle, who were prepared to make all kinds of conces-
sions to any totalitarian regime so long as it was sufficiently
far away and posed no immediate threat to France.

The Communist countries, meanwhile, pursue their aims
of worldwide expansion. At present this manifests itself
mainly in the Third World, where the USSR and China com-
pete for the control of countries supplying raw materials.
Control over those resources would enable them to exert
pressure on the West. At the same time they are also pursu-
ing strategic aims. All this displays an irrational thrust for the
expansion of their influence which K. Witvogel was the first
to note as characteristic of totalitarian systems. The USSR
and China stop at nothing to increase their influence in the
Third World, supporting even the most inhuman regimes and
provoking armed conflicts, as for instance in the Middle East,
the Indian subcontinent, and so on.

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CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

Existing political systems are conditioned to a significant
degree by economics, but political and economic systems are
by no means synonymous. Political systems can be divided
into two types according to the criterion of whether civil
rights are guaranteed or not — democracy and dictatorship,
the extreme form of which is totalitarianism, imposing on the
population not only power but also ideology. Communist
countries are as a rule totalitarian — at least that is how it has
been to date.

But dictatorships and totalitarian regimes can exist in the
West too — for example, totalitarian Nazi Germany and the
dictatorial regimes of Greece, Haiti, Chile, Uganda, Iraq and
Libya, to name but a few.

Therefore the nationalization of production and the ab-
sence of guarantees for private property are not the only con-
ditions for the absence of democracy. The real causes are the
selfish interests of various groups which, given the chance,
subordinate the rest of the population of the country, al-
though in Communist countries the absence of democracy is
the essential prerequisite of their existence.

Many people believe it to be self-evident that existing
democratic systems represent some sort of absolute good.
The intelligentsia of Communist countries, who regard con-
temporary parliamentary states as ideally free and demo-
cratic, are particularly prone to this view. But the stumbling
block to such a view is the question of why so many people
in these parliamentary states are dissatisfied with them —
for dissatisfied they undoubtedly are. Powerful left-wing
movements are rocking such ancient and seemingly stable
parliamentary states as France and Italy. They accuse these
states of lacking democracy, of corruption and so forth, while
paradoxically idealizing precisely those states that defenders
of parliamentarianism call totalitarian.

A man who has been accustomed to breathing fresh air all
his life does not notice it, and never realizes what a blessing
it is. He thinks of it only occasionally when entering a stuffy
room, but knows that he need only open the window for the
air to become fresh again. A man who has grown up in a dem-

75

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

ocratic society and who takes the basic freedoms as much for
granted as the air he breathes is in much the same position.
People who have grown up under democracy do not value it
highly enough. Yet there are weighty reasons for their dissat-
isfaction with this society.

In the first place political struggle in a democracy bears the
essential stamp of totalitarianism — not, of course, of the kind
prevailing in totalitarian countries, but enough to be irritat-
ing. In all conscience it is hardly credible that the entire vast
range of existing philosophies and viewpoints could be con-
tained in the political programs of two or three main parties.
But political activity outside these parties, which have taken
on the form of large bureaucratic organizations, is largely
pointless, since it requires the spending of a great deal of
money to achieve any effect.

The overwhelming majority of voters and politicians ad-
here to the parties out of conformism, which is reinforced by
vast propaganda machines, or else for career reasons. The tyr-
anny of the majority can be oppressive indeed, especially if
the majority is very little bigger than the minority. How op-
pressive and pernicious such a tyranny can be has been well
known since the time of the Athens Republic.

A parliamentary system guarantees dissenters many per-
sonal freedoms, but does nothing to shield society from the
massive propaganda of conformism, which exerts great pres-
sure on people and is extremely difficult to resist. Let us sup-
pose there is a religious minority which for reasons of
conscience does not wish to read pornographic literature, and
even less to see it in the hands of its children. In a contempo-
rary democracy such a minority will be unable to live accord-
ing to its convictions, since the entrepreneur who profits
from pornographic literature enjoys unlimited freedom to ex-
ploit any of the mass media for its popularization. This is
bound to have an effect at least on the children of this minor-
ity, if not on the adults.

One of democratic society’s gravest defects is its lack of
control over the mass media. While this is a good guarantee of
basic freedoms, the price paid for it is rather high.

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

The mass media in today’s democracies are commercial,
which accounts for their size and their truly astronomical
circulation figures. The information industry plays a vital role
in stimulating consumption. It tries to appeal to the widest
possible range of human perceptions, exploiting the sexual
urges more and more and transforming them into a force that
destroys society.

Furthermore, those who control the mass media, and also
journalists, can at times become more influential than politi-
cians. Since in a democracy the mass media enjoy unlimited
freedom, nobody can put pressure on a publisher or journal-
ist and have him removed. These people, unlike politi-
cians or judges, are elected by nobody, yet their real pow.er is
immense.

Other democratic freedoms are also being turned inside
out. The freedom to acquire arms, intended to make life more
secure, can now make life in countries like the USA more
dangerous, since weapons can be acquired by people who
will use them to the detriment of others.

The freedom to strike, so vital to workers defending their
rights, can be used by thugs both criminal and political for
disreputable purposes, such as blackmailing employers. It
has now become one of the chief sources of inflation.

Freedom of movement within a country, freedom to enter
and leave a country, can easily be abused by criminals or by
hostile totalitarian states for the purposes of espionage and so
forth.

In a modem democratic society life is stressful, and that is
one reason for the dissatisfaction. This tension makes many
people who have grown up in democracies envy totalitarian
countries, where life is much calmer and slower moving,
where many of the alarms that upset people in the democra-
cies do not exist.

Oddly enough, life in totalitarian countries, indeed any life
under conditions of constraint, does at first sight have some
attractions. Russians before the abolition of serfdom and the
Jewish ghettos of the Middle Ages were noted for the mea-
sured rhythm of their existence: every man knew his station

77

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

in life and his prospects, he did not rebel, he was apparently
psychologically far more contented than the modem inhabi-
tant of a democratic country.

Where there are no freedoms, there is no requirement to
participate in the political struggle. A man who lives in a to-
talitarian society is obliged to follow a prescribed political
line, and so long as he does so — as the majority generally
do, at least once totalitarianism has been in control for a few
years — he feels much more secure than if he had to choose
between conformity and resistance.

The inhabitant of a totalitarian society is called upon to
make far fewer decisions than a man living in a democratic
society. For example, if there is no freedom of movement in a
totalitarian country, nobody will have to think about where to
live. If there is no choice of employment, that is another ago-
nizing choice less. If free competition and free enterprise do
not exist, there is no need to engage in this competition,
which many in any case find unendurable. At the same time,
the inhabitant of a totalitarian state may be much less well off
than the inhabitant of a democracy, but since his country’s
overall standard of living is so different, he is perfectly con-
tent with his situation and secure in his modest future.

The inhabitant of a totalitarian society is not bothered by
most of the temptations which would trouble his peace of
mind in a democracy: the exploitation of sex, for example,
provided this is prohibited by law. And the same applies to
the preservation of the family and marriage.

The inhabitant of a totalitarian country (so long as he is
loyal) feels far safer than the inhabitant of a democracy, since
where he lives there is no freedom to acquire or carry
weapons, police regulations are stricter, and so on.

Totalitarian regimes limit the flow of disturbing or worry-
ing news. The media in these countries are as a rule forbid-
den to report crimes, accidents and natural disasters
occurring at home (though not in hostile countries). At the
same time they are instructed to maintain optimism by filter-
ing out anything that might encourage fears of impending
world catastrophe, and so forth.

7 8

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

For this reason very many people living in totalitarian
countries, having survived terror and been brainwashed by
propaganda, are not only genuinely content with their posi-
tion, but virtually consider themselves to be the happiest
people on earth. This, however, engenders an inferiority
complex vis-a-vis the democracies, so that the inhabitants of
totalitarian countries often turn into implacable enemies of
freedom, ready and willing to destroy everything that re-
minds them of the free will they have lost This also applies
in many respects to the intellectuals of these countries, who
often display a pathological fear of freedom.

So far I have talked about the defects of contemporary de-
mocracy. But the defects of totalitarianism are of a com-
pletely different order. Democracy’s faults pale into
insignificance beside the enormities of totalitarianism, such
as the deaths of tens of millions of people in Soviet and Ger-
man death camps and prisons. So long as totalitarianism con-
tinues to exist, it organically bears the seeds of lawlessness
within itself although the crimes of the Nazi period in Ger-
many or 1918-1956 in the USSR cannot, in the nature of
things, occur often.

But totalitarian societies are neither eternal nor unshak-
able. They age and disintegrate under the impact of many
factors.

First of all, in striving to extend their sway over the largest
possible area, they lose their capacity for effective govern-
ment, especially such giants as the USSR and China.

Totalitarian countries are riven by conflicts of various
kinds — national, social and political. Another important fee-
tor undermining their stability is the revival of religious con-
sciousness, the natural enemy of totalitarianism, which lays
claim to total control of the human spirit All this goes to
make totalitarian societies short-lived.

But even the democracies of today are becoming less and
less stable, and there are forces growing and consolidating
within them that threaten to bury them altogether. The rea-
son is that these societies have lost the basic, valuable first
principles of democracy. The democracies came into being

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CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

and took shape in concrete historical conditions, when their
populations exercised a high degree of self-discipline based
on ethics. As the influence of religious values declined, this
discipline began to diminish, posing a growing threat to dem-
ocratic society.

The free sale of arms in the USA in the nineteenth century
was no threat, but now that the self-discipline which once
prevented their abuse has been lost, it has become a serious
menace. A simple prohibition on the sale of weapons would
accomplish nothing, since vast quantities are already in the
hands of the public and could be withdrawn only by the
application of draconian measures unthinkable in a de-
mocracy.

It goes without saying that the evaluative approach to the
mass media has also disappeared. We can take as an example
the extremely sympathetic and well-intentioned journal
Index , 2 which is devoted to a worldwide struggle against cen-
sorship. In it there is a regular chronicle recording infringe-
ments of freedom of the press. Consciously rejecting the
evaluative approach to censorship, its compilers place facts
about the tyrannical persecution of any manifestation of in-
dependent thought in the USSR or Czechoslovakia side by
side with reports of some mild administrative measure taken
against a neo-Nazi journalist in West Germany.

A significant contributory factor to the destabilization of
the democracies is the ability of totalitarian states to meddle
unpunished in their internal affairs, while the latter permit
no shadow of interference in their own.

The only reason, indeed, why democratic societies still
exist is that their populations have not yet altogether lost
their self-control. One may conclude that existing systems,
from both the economic and the political point of view, are
possessed of a large quantity of faults, and the superiority of
one over the other may be regarded simply as the lesser of
two evils.

2. Index on Censorship , a quarterly journal published in London by Writers
and Scholars International Ltd. — Trans.

8o

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

Let us now attempt to paint a rough picture of the socio-
economic system of the future. It will resemble the present
socioeconomic system of neither West nor East. It would be
incorrect to call the future society socialist, since this term
has been devalued many times over by the historical practice
of the last fifty years. Socialism consciously rejects spiritual
and moral values, it preaches violence as the means of social
struggle, thereby arriving at a negation of the concept of so-
cial justice which it advances.

Is there a real alternative to the systems of today? Is it pos-
sible to create a system free from their glaring faults? A just
and rational system can be built only on a foundation of spiri-
tual and moral values. And that means that the point of de-
parture for the solution of social, economic and political
questions should be the principle of social justice for all and
the renunciation of violence as a means of solving social
problems. There should also be a complete renunciation of
the totally outdated (and never correct) theory of the workers’
exercising some sort of hegemony over society, and of the
ideology that turned out to be nothing but a convenient
smoke screen for the establishment of totalitarian regimes by
tiny groups of intellectuals. Workers in Communist countries
have far fewer rights than in the West. Enormous numbers of
workers are in any case a specific characteristic only of our
present systems and in the future, the class of persons perma-
nently engaged in servicing manufacturing equipment may
well disappear altogether.

Violence, as the experience of the Russian and other revo-
lutions has shown, can only aggravate the faults of the system
that preceded the revolution. The Marxist theory of the class
struggle has become not a means of defending the workers’
interests but an ideology to justify terror and hegemony over
them. Marxism has in general become an anachronism, an
obstacle to further progress, although of course parts of it will
still have relevance for the future.

It is essential to eradicate the idea that productivity is the
yardstick of a society’s progressiveness. The aim of the future
should not be productivity growth, not the constant rise of

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CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

production and consumption, but the maintenance of produc-
tivity, production and consumption at the level compatible
with the restrictions dictated by the interests of society and
the real level of resources.

In the economy of the future manufacture should be bro-
ken down into smaller units, but the units should have an ad-
vanced scientific and technological base. Enterprises will
have to be small enough for every employee to understand
the production process and be genuinely able to participate
in its management. These enterprises will have to be univer-
sal, so that they are capable of manufacturing a large variety
of products. Present knowledge indicates that such installa-
tions could have great potential. For this they will have to be
sufficiently productive to be able to manufacture items indi-
vidually or in short runs.

The problem of small enterprises is already attracting a
great deal of attention, especially in the United States. Their
number is increasing and their importance growing. Accord-
ing to a survey of metal-processing machinery in the United
States (American Machinist, 1973, No. 22, pp. 143-149), the
significance of small manufacturing plants with less than a
hundred employees has grown considerably. Fifteen percent
of the eleven million people employed in mechanical engi-
neering in the United States now work in them, and over 40
percent of the metal-processing machinery is concentrated in
them.

There is another problem that demands attention — the
use of computers to control small enterprises. At present such
enterprises are limited in what they can perform. But there is
no doubt that in the near future more sophisticated en-
terprises will appear on the scene, capable of manufacturing
complex products on a one-off or short-run basis. Technically
this is perfectly feasible. With the aid of enterprises of this
kind, it should be possible to supply most of the consumer
goods and machinery we require.

Let us suppose that these enterprises were at the disposal
of communes or municipalities. Their output would be in-
tended not for sale or disposal, but for their own use. In that

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CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

case the enterprise would be in action only when the com-
mune or municipality really needed something from it. With
a high level of amortization it would not require a great deal
of the time of those who worked in it, and work there could
be combined with agricultural labor or intellectual activity.
Manufacturing in this form would do away with workers as a
specialized group whose interests were predominantly
linked with production.

The abolition of the gulf between physical and intellectual
labor, as also between industrial and agricultural work, will
be one of the essential features of the future. That is how the
ideologist of anarchy. Prince P. Kropotkin, pictured the fu-
ture. He saw future society as being composed of communes
where physical labor would be combined with the intellec-
tual. He thought people could spend part of their time in
physical labor, producing essential foodstuffs and manufac-
tured goods. The kibbutzim of Israel approach this ideal to
some extent, though at present they work mainly for the out-
side consumer.

Communes or municipalities with these enterprises at
their disposal will not, of course, be able to do everything for
themselves: a certain amount of economic centralization will
also be necessary. In the first place there will have to be a
mining industry, unless the problem of resources is to be
solved in some other way. Second, it will be essential to
produce the means of production. And third, we will need
specialized scientific research.

The mining industry will be much smaller than at present
because of the sharp fall that will take place in the demand
for resources. Nevertheless, the extraction of resources will
require centralized effort. The same applies to the produc-
tion of the means of production and the pursuit of scientific
research. Therefore the decentralized economy will have to
be combined with elements of centralization in areas where
local groups cannot cope.

Naturally the total output of manufacturing will be much
less than in contemporary systems and the productivity of
labor will also be correspondingly lower. But that will repre-

83

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

sent a major step toward social progress, since both output
and the productivity of labor will be at the level necessary to
satisfy the optimum (but not maximum) needs of society.

This society of the future, while living within the means of
its real resources, would assure man’s daily needs without
the monstrous excesses of the contemporary world, and it
would be stable. But it should be clearly understood that a
fundamentally decentralized economy of this kind would
probably be incompatible with the existence of a large urban
population; either the urban population must greatly de-
crease in numbers, or the structure of the city must be com-
pletely changed.

It would be a great blessing if we could start laying the
foundations of such a system now within the framework of
contemporary society. The question of small enterprises has
been discussed before, and has been opposed by such ad-
vocates of large-scale industry as John Kenneth Galbraith. He
asserts that: “The small firm cannot be restored by breaking
the power of the larger ones. It would require, rather, the
rejection of the technology which since earliest conscious-
ness we are taught to applaud. It would require that we have
simple products made with simple equipment from readily
available materials by unspecialized labor” (J. K. Galbraith,
The New Industrial State, Moscow, Progress, 1969, p. 70). 8
But this is a mistaken view, being based on an incorrect as-
sessment of the small enterprise’s potential. The very con-
cept of the small enterprise becomes viable precisely as a
result of technological progress. Therefore it is most impor-
tant to overcome the prejudice which states that generalized
production is always less efficient than specialized produc-
tion. Technological progress and the decentralization of the
economy are not incompatible. What is more, when Galbraith
wrote the lines quoted above, the idea of highly automated
small enterprises had still not come into being.

The political structure of future society, to an even greater
degree than its economy, will have to be founded on spiritual

3. See John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1967). — Trans.

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CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

and moral values. This must make it totally unlike totalitar-
ianism, but simultaneously unlike today’s democratic socie-
ties. The society of the future must be democratic, but first, it
will need a high degree of self-discipline capable of warding
off many conflicts, and second, in order to avoid the mistakes
of the past, some key aspects of social life will have to be
controlled, though the control must not be of a totalitarian
nature.

A high degree of economic decentralization will inevitably
lead to political decentralization, preserving democracy at all
levels of government. The central government should be lim-
ited to the fulfillment of the most basic functions, such as the
initiation of legislation and the supervision of its observance,
the exploitation of natural resources, the directing of large-
scale scientific research, and so forth.

We should strive toward the elimination of political parties
as bureaucratic organizations with their own secretariats, pro-
paganda channels and finances. The elimination of parties is
perfectly feasible, first because in a decentralized society the
central authority will confer no particular privileges, and sec-
ond because the psychological basis of the political parties
will also disappear. The contemporary class structure of soci-
ety, which fuels political antagonism, will disappear, as will
the so-called intelligentsia (as a social class, not as a spiritual
entity), since the polarity between physical and mental work
will also have been eliminated. And this is the base on which
all parties are built. There will of course always be groups of
like-minded people who can combine for the pursuit of cer-
tain common aims. The point is that the creation of special
bureaucratic organizations with their secretariats, finances,
and so on, is dangerous to society, whatever views their ad-
herents propound.

The center of gravity will shift to the individual small com-
mune, and everyone will be able to defend his own point of
view alone or in alliance with others. A man in whom trust is
reposed at elections will have the opportunity to carry out
any program without being committed to party discipline.
Any man will be eligible for election as a deputy, but voting

85

CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

must be for him personally and not for the party he repre-
sents.

It is vital that society should take control of the mass
media. These are at present used for two purposes, the rela-
tive importance of which depends on the socioeconomic sys-
tem. In Western countries it is commercial purposes which
predominate, while in Communist countries it is propaganda.
Both these uses of the mass media are extremely dangerous.

The mass media must be freed from their commercial and
propagandist character. Without their commercial function
their size will be greatly reduced, if only by the amount of
advertising. And this will also change their content Cen-
sorship of the mass media is absolutely indispensable, but it
should be exercised not by bureaucratic organizations but by
elected persons.

In fact the managers of the mass media, like the censors,
will have to be freely elected in exactly the same way as the
government and the judiciary and they must be independent
of the organs of power. The censor is just as important to so-
ciety as a judge, for example. Perhaps his responsibility is
even greater than a judge’s, since the moral and spiritual
health of society will depend on him. Censorship must be
carried out according to clear and unambiguous terms of ref-
erence laid down by constitutional statute. Naturally there
must also be a right of appeal against the censor’s decisions,
which must in no case be absolute.

One of the censorship’s particular tasks must be to ensure
that information about varieties of crime does not turn into a
cult that glamorizes crime, and that the public should not be
artificially involved in other people’s family scandals, and
so on. Incidentally, this sort of information is strictly cen-
sored in the mass media of totalitarian countries, but there
the restrictions are demagogic in nature and are intended
to maintain illusions about the supposed perfection of
totalitarianism.

But in order to avoid the restriction of intellectual freedom,
everybody must be given the opportunity to express his opin-

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CONTEMPORARY SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

ions, even if only for limited circulation, so that, for instance,
they could be available for consultation in libraries.

It would be presumptuous to try to fill in the contours of
the future socioeconomic system in any more detail. Indeed,
it would be difficult, though others could possibly discern,
and may still do so, additional essential features overlooked
here. The establishment of such a system will obviously take
considerable time, and considerable difficulty will be experi-
enced on the way. What seems obvious is that any future so-
cioeconomic system must be built without violence and
without the unconsidered imposition of stereotypes from
above. It must be created organically out of existing systems.

But is this vision of the future only a figment of the imagi-
nation? Does the surrounding world not suggest the op-
posite, that the conflicts inherent in contemporary systems
will only intensify in the future? And would it not be more
honest to admit it? After all, pessimistic thoughts of this na-
ture are entertained both by positivists and by religious peo-
ple with their eschatological view of the world.

Perhaps it will be as the pessimists believe, but that will
happen only if mankind completely loses that flame, or even
that spark that has inspired its best achievements. Those who
have survived so much and still preserve this spark tend to
believe that it is inextinguishable. And that gives weighty
reasons for historical optimism.

87

Separation or Reconciliation?
The Nationalities Question in the USSR

IGOR SHAFAREVICH

Of all the urgent problems that have accumulated in our life,
the most painful seems to be that concerning relations be-
tween the various nationalities of the USSR. 1 No other ques-
tion arouses such explosions of resentment, malice and
pain — neither material inequality, nor lack of spiritual free-
dom, nor even the persecution of religion. Here are some ex-
amples.

In our Central Asian cities I and many others have often
heard the cry: “Just wait till the Chinese come, they’ll show
you what’s what!” This is said as a rule by moderately edu-
cated people, who cannot be unaware of what the arrival of
the Chinese would entail for them, if only on the basis of
what happened to the Kirghizians, who were lucky enough to
get away after being deprived of all their possessions and
driven out of China (And the Tibetans, for example, accord-
ing to the radio, were subjected to mass castrations.) They
know all this, but they say it all the same. Evidently the pitch
of emotion is more powerful even than the instinct of self-
preservation, as in the western Ukraine in 1941, when de-
tachments of the Ukrainian Nationalist Union harried the re-

1. There are fifteen union republics and over a hundred different national-
ities in the USSR.— Trans.

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SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

treating Soviet forces, and their officers made deals with the
Germans, although they could not have failed to foresee, on
the basis of the experience of the Poles, what in fact actually
happened six weeks later — the arrest of the entire officer
corps and the liquidation of most of the detachments.

One gets the same impression when one compares the
treatment of the national question in samizdat with that of
other seemingly no less burning problems — the fate of those
imprisoned in the labor camps, for instance, or the incarcer-
ation of the sane in mental hospitals. It is noticeable that the
authors of the vast majority of samizdat works voluntarily
keep within certain limits, observe certain self-imposed re-
straints; they do not incite hatred or envy of the better off, or
advocate violence. It seems that certain lessons of the past
have been so thoroughly assimilated that they have set un-
shakable new standards of thought.

Yet when the nationalities question comes up these taboos
evaporate. One finds indignant descriptions of one people
living better than another, or, if they live worse, still receiv-
ing more than they have earned. Samizdat-published
schemes for the resolution of the nationalities question
usually include demands for the forcible resettlement of
various populations and transparent hints that even harsher
measures would be in order. One is left with the impression
that, when writing about this area, the authors on the con-
trary tend to forget everything the past has taught us.

Suspicion and friction between nations is not an exclu-
sively Soviet tendency — one sees it the world over. And we
can try to understand our own problems only if we recognize
them as local manifestations of natural laws common to all
mankind.

The twentieth century was not expected to be the century
of unprecedentedly extreme nationalism. In the last century
it was generally agreed that the national problem was wither-
ing away, that the smaller nations would slowly merge into
the larger, that the differences between the large nations
would gradually diminish, and that in the not too distant fu-
ture mankind would fuse in worldwide unity, perhaps even

89

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

all speaking one language. The exact opposite has turned out
to be the case. Countries that have lived for centuries in na-
tional accord have been engulfed by national enmities. Un-
suspected varieties of nationalism have appeared on the
scene — Breton, Walloon and Welsh, for example. Enmity
between peoples has reached an unprecedented peak of mu-
tual hatred, leading to the extermination of whole peoples, as
in the Nigerian civil war.

That was not the nineteenth century’s only miscalculation,
not the only case where the dominant ideology of the time
was diametrically opposed to the future whose foundations it
laid. At that time it seemed that man was faced with the clear
prospect of constructing a life increasingly based on the prin-
ciples of humanitarianism, respect for the rights of the indi-
vidual, and democracy. Russia seemed to be blocking the
road of progress precisely because she was insufficiently lib-
eral and democratic internally. Dostoyevsky alone, ap-
parently, felt in his bones that the world would suffer quite a
different fate.

The actual historic role of the twentieth century, as it
turned out, was to put large parts of mankind in thrall to an
ideology that pursued the maximum suppression of the indi-
vidual. Socialism, which had existed for centuries as a theory,
started to materialize in the form of socialist states. This pro-
cess has continued in fits and starts throughout the twentieth
century, expanding with almost monotonous regularity, and
there is no reason to suppose it has ended yet. We should
bear this basic twentieth-century trend in mind when seek-
ing to understand the national question, both in our own
country and in the world as a whole.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the picture of the
world was defined by the roles played in it by the “great
powers” — the strongest states, led by peoples inspired by
the belief that they were destined to play a special role in the
world. In this situation socialist movements had the choice of
two strategies: either to exploit these great nations’ aspira-
tions, their faith in their own mission, or else to suppress
those aspirations. Both strategies were tried. Experience

90

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

showed that although it could be useful to exploit national
feelings to buttress the stability of an existing socialist state
(especially in times of grave crisis and war), when it came to
the seizure of power and drawing fresh nations into the so-
cialist ideology, there was incomparably more to be gained
from whipping up the ideology of antinationalism, especially
when it was directed against the large nations and accom-
panied by a certain encouragement of patriotism among
smaller peoples. This strategy, therefore, became the basic
weapon of Marxist-oriented socialist movements, whose
fundamental ideology was internationalism, the denial and
destruction of patriotism, and the doctrine of the division of
nations into two hostile cultures. This philosophy, so foreign
to the spirit of states possessing a strong national and espe-
cially religious identity, helped to destroy them, and itself
gathered strength as these states underwent periods of crisis.
Whichever was cause and whichever effect, it is obvious that
we have here two manifestations of a single process.

The Russian Empire, standing on a foundation of Ortho-
doxy, was the first to fall victim to this process; then Austria-
Hungary, with its thousand-year-old roots in the Holy Roman
Empire. A quarter of a century later came the end of Greater
Germany as a single, united state. And even among the vic-
tors, the British Empire soon ceased to exist.

All these political catastrophes were accompanied by vi-
cious ideological attacks on the leading peoples in those
countries and on their claim to a special historic mission. For
example, in postwar (that is, post-Second World War) Ger-
many their whole literature set itself the aim of demon-
strating to the German people its sinfulness and ineradicable
guilt before all mankind. On both the individual and the na-
tional level, repentance is one of the most uplifting emotions
of the spirit, and the Germans certainly had plenty to repent.
But repentance loses its point when purification is carried
out with no higher end in view: then it becomes an act of
spiritual suicide. We Russians know only too well how this
theme of an “accursed past” can deprive a nation of its his-
tory! And there would seem to be a certain symbolism in the

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SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

close personal ties that exist between the German writers of
this penitent generation and the politicians who seek to per-
suade the Germans that the greatest service they can do the
world is to reconcile themselves forever to the perpetual di-
vision of their country, in other words, accept the death of
the German nation.

Finally, in the USA the savage anti-Vietnam War campaign
was scarcely inspired by heightened moral sensitivity or a
greater sense of responsibility. If it was, why did the geno-
cide of the entire Ibo nation in Nigeria, which led to more
deaths than the whole Vietnam War, pass almost unre-
marked? Even some leading antiwar figures openly admitted
that the war was not the real issue. “End the Vietnam War,
and we’ll find something else to protest about,’’ as one of
them said. One gets the impression that what the protesters
were really attacking was America’s claim to a special world
role, the sense of being a great nation, which has still not
abandoned the Americans.

Whenever great empires have crumbled, national con-
sciousness has always sharpened in the separate nations com-
posing them and ethnic groups have separated out and
aspired to recognition as independent states. Here again,
cause and effect are inseparable. National separatism both
acted as a force for the destruction of the old empire and si-
multaneously expanded to fill the vacuum created in people’s
hearts by the destruction of the sense of imperial unity and a
unifying purpose. A similar dual trend is increasingly appar-
ent in the twentieth century: both the destruction of great
states ruled by a national idea, and the fission of mankind
into ever smaller national units.

It seems to me that if we look at the situation in this light,
we have some hope of understanding why the national ques-
tion is particularly explosive in our country, for the present
relationships between the nationalities are the consequence
of contradictory historical processes. On the one hand, the
separation out of the different nations and their drive for
maximum possible independence have coincided with the

92

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

subordination of all life to socialist ideology. These processes
have been so inextricably intertwined that in many cases it
has been impossible to distinguish between the manifesta-
tions of one and the manifestations of the other. For example,
tendencies toward non-Russian separatism were first deliber-
ately encouraged as a counterweight to Russian patriotism,
but then were treated as the greatest menace. On the other
hand, these nationalist aspirations soon came into conflict
with socialist ideology’s deepest-rooted tenets — hostility to
the very idea of nationhood and the drive to suppress both
the idea itself and the individual human personality.

In this way the national life of many peoples has fallen vic-
tim to that very force — socialist ideology — that not so long
ago assisted and encouraged them to develop a system of
views expressing an intolerant, radical nationalism. So
deeply has this ideology penetrated the national outlook and
so strong is its imprint that those who argue from national
positions can hardly be persuaded that ideology, of all things,
is the root cause of their misfortunes.

This has given rise to the concept — which I consider fun-
damentally erroneous — underlying practically every study
of the national question in our country known to me (I refer,
of course, only to uncensored literature). This concept is a
very simple one: All the problems of the non-Russian peo-
ples are due in the long run to Russian oppression and the
drive for Russification. The regions inhabited by these na-
tions are Russian colonies. These peoples therefore have a
clear task before them : to rid themselves of Russian colonial
dominion.

This theory has quite understandable attractions. It
squeezes a complicated problem into the framework of a few
simple and universally acceptable propositions. It is gener-
ally agreed that colonialism is the disgrace of the twentieth
century and that colonies should become independent as
soon as possible. Therefore all you need do is acquire “colo-
nial” status in the eyes of the world and you are at once
guaranteed the automatic support of colossal forces. And this
means you can also offer your people an extremely clear and

93

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

simple way forward. But primitively simple solutions to com-
plex problems do not exist! We must be careful to verify the
basic premise — that non-Russian peoples of the USSR are
the colonial subjects of the Russian people — not only to dis-
cover the truth, but also because a conclusion based on a
false premise cannot prove a reliable guide for the peoples
who propose it.

The arguments generally used to demonstrate the non-Rus-
sian peoples’ dependent and colonial status in the USSR do
at first appear to carry conviction. The commonest are as
follows:

(1) Great riches are extracted from the territory inhabited
by non-Russians and go to enrich the Russian-inhabited part
of the USSR.

(2) The density of the indigenous populations is declining;
they are being diluted. Two reasons are given: the deporta-
tion of indigenous populations (in the past) and the immigra-
tion of large numbers of Russians (now). Russians come as
workers in the new industrial enterprises, which are often
created for no good economic reason and are irrelevant to the
development of the particular region.

(3) National cultures are suppressed. Distinctive national
tendencies in art are prohibited and their manifestations pun-
ished. History is compulsorily rewritten so as to belittle the
people’s national identity. Historical relics are destroyed in-
stead of preserved, ancient cities and streets are given new
names unrelated to the nation’s past.

(4) National religions are suppressed.

(5) The national languages are increasingly superseded by
Russian.

However, these arguments take on a different aspect if we
ask: could they not be applied to the Russian people as well?
Let us examine them in order.

(1) As some studies of the national question show, the Rus-
sian people enjoys a lower standard of living than many other
peoples — the Georgians, Armenians, Ukrainians, Latvians
or Estonians.

Sometimes this is explained away as characteristic of a pe-

94

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

culiar kind of colonialism — Russian-type colo nialism. Is this
not an attempt to blind us to the basic contradiction with new
terminology? It seems obvious to me that this is a general
phenomenon: an enormous part of the wealth produced by
all the nations is not returned to them. It is easy enough to
guess where it goes: on the maintenance of a vast military
machine and civil bureaucracy, on space exploration, on aid
to revolutionary movements in Asia, Africa and Latin
America, and most of all on making good the shortcomings of
the economy.

(2) Few, if any, would maintain that in the past — during
collectivization, for example — the Russians were less sub-
ject to deportation than other peoples. As for the present day,
attention should be drawn to a universal cause — the dispro-
portionate development of the economy based on no nation’s
interest. In this cause masses of Russians and non-Russians
are uprooted and diverted from their national tasks. While
documents written by Ukrainians complain of Russian migra-
tion into the Ukraine, Estonians and Latvians complain, not
only of floods of Russians settling in their lands, but of floods
of Ukrainians too.

(3) The suppression of Russian national culture began at a
time when other nations were still being actively encouraged
to assert their national identity. Many samizdat studies of the
national question still accuse the Russians of “great power
chauvinism.” But when this term was invented, more than
half a century ago, it amounted to nothing less than an invita-
tion to stamp out any manifestation of Russian national con-
sciousness.

In the last century, long before the state took a hand, all-
powerful liberal public opinion declared Russian patriotism
to be reactionary, a disgrace to Russians and a menace to ev-
erybody. And to this very day Russian national consciousness
lives under unwinking, hostile surveillance, like a trans-
ported criminal under police supervision. Here is a recent
dire warning. A group of anonymous authors published a
sequence of interconnected articles, an anthology almost, in
No. 97 of the Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Studenches-

95

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

kogo Dvizhenia ( Herald of the Russian Student Christian
Movement ). 2 The Latin word forming the first article’s title,
and that which was meant to attract the reader at first glance
in all the articles, was a call to Russia to repent. And which,
of all Russia’s transgressions, did the authors consider the
most heinous? The belief, it turns out, that Russia has a his-
toric mission, that she too has something of her own, a new
word, to offer the world; or, as the authors put it, “Russian
messianism.” This is the sin they call on Russians to repent;
this, they say, should be Russia’s main aim in the future.
Their own stated aim is so to change the nation’s conscious-
ness that it dare not imagine its life has some aim! What
other nation has ever been subjected to such sermons?

Several generations of Russians have been brought up on
such a horrendous version of Russian history that all they
want to do is to try and forget we ever had a past at all. Russia
was the “gendarme of Europe” and the “prison of the peo-
ples,” its history consisted of “one defeat after another” and
was always characterized by one and the same phrase: “the
accursed past.”

Even the broom of new names that has swept away every-
thing linking us with our past has scarcely affected another
people more cruelly than the Russian. Let me suggest a sim-
ple experiment for those who wish to try it: get on a bus pass-
ing through the center of Moscow and listen to the names of
the stops as the driver calls them out. It will immediately
strike you that streets retaining their old, original names are
rare exceptions — it is as if some brush had painted out all
reminders of the fact that the Russian people once had a
history.

(4) Similarly with the suppression of religion. The Russian
Orthodox Church was suffering its first blows while Islam,
for example, was still being handled with kid gloves. In this
first push, indeed, an important role was assigned to the ex-
ploitation of the religious politics of other nations: for ex-
ample, an independent, autocephalous Georgian church was
2. Published in Russian by the Y.M.C.A. Press in Paris. — Trans.

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

set up, and attempts were made to create a similar church in
the Ukraine.

(5) It is only with the fifth and last of the above arguments
that one cannot disagree: all this activity is indeed taking
place mainly in the Russian language, as the state language
of the USSR. But what do the Russians gain from that?

Other painful features of national life are also worth men-
tioning — above all, the catastrophic decline of the village,
which has always been the mainstay of national identity. But
in this respect too the Russians have suffered no less than
other peoples.

I think the theory of “Russian colonialism” is not only un-
fair to the Russians but also erroneous in fact, and therefore
damaging to the other peoples by impeding a proper under-
standing of their own national life. In fact, the basic features
of national life in the USSR are a direct result of the hege-
mony in our country of socialist ideology. This ideology is
the enemy of every nation, just as it is hostile to individual
human personality. It is able to exploit the aspirations of
this or that people temporarily, for its own purposes, but its
fundamental trend is toward the maximum destruction of all
nations. The Russians no less than others are its victims ; in-
deed, they were the first to come underfire.

If we accept this view of how the nations came to their
present pass, we must correspondingly adjust our practical at-
titude to present problems. Since the blame for the present
situation cannot be laid at one people’s door, it follows that to
a certain extent all the peoples are to blame. This seems a
more constructive view to me, since it frees our minds from
bondage to external causes, over which we generally have no
control, and instead concentrates them on causes hidden
within ourselves, over which by definition we have much
more control. A similar dilemma confronts the individual: is
the fundamental course of his life determined by external
factors (material circumstances, social environment, and so
on), or is it inherent in himself? In the final analysis the

97

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

question is one of free will. The same question confronts the
nation. But if one acknowledges the preeminence of inner
causes, if one acknowledges that a nation’s fate is determined
more by its own actions and outlook on life than by external
factors, then it follows that the inner causes will not be
changed by simply breaking with the Russians. In other
words, once the concept of “colonization” has been ex-
ploded, the concept of “decolonization” also needs rethink-
ing. All I mean by this is that we must rid ourselves of certain
habits of thought, of the unverifiable and undebatable con-
viction that breaking away from the Russians and creating
one’s own state is the automatic solution to all the problems
of every nation. I think I see here a profound analogy with
the position of those Russian intellectuals who gave in to the
temptation to take a novel — and for us quite new and un-
usual — way out of their situation by emigrating. In both
cases there is an underlying wish to “escape from your own
shadow” — to solve by external means problems that are es-
sentially within.

We have all had a hand in creating the problems that now
confront us: the Russian Nihilists, the Ukrainian “Borot-
bists,” 3 the Latvian riflemen 4 and many others have each
done their bit. How can we hope, separately, to disentangle
the knot that we all helped to tighten?

Our forefathers unanimously declared Russia to be the
“prison of the peoples,” adding the words of their favorite
battle cry: “. . . we’ll raze it to the ground, and after that
. . The razing of the “prison of peoples” was a phenome-

nal success, but after that . . . After that, for example, a group
of Estonian nationalists has written to the United Nations,
claiming that the very existence of the Estonian nation is
threatened. And they called for the final rupture of all rela-
tions with the peoples of the USSR, the expulsion of Rus-

3. “Borotbists” was the name of a Ukrainian Communist party at the time of
the October revolution which was allied with the Bolsheviks. In later years
it was disbanded and most of its surviving leaders executed. — Trans.

4. A reference to the Latvian rifle regiments of the tsarist army which went
over to Lenin during the October revolution and actively supported the
Bolsheviks against rival factions and later the Whites. — Trans.

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SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

sians and Ukrainians from Estonia and the stationing of UN
troops there. Has history not taught us at least this, that it is
hardly the height of political wisdom to throw away cen-
turies-old alliances like useless trash, and that it is necessary
to begin, not by razing to the ground, but rather by changing
and improving ?

A common history has welded the nations of our land
together. The experience it has endowed us with is unique in
the world, no other peoples possess it. Strange as it may
sound, in many respects we are now immeasurably further
along the historical road than many peoples we are in the
habit of only “catching up with.” The phase in which West-
ern Europe and the USA now find themselves is remarkably
reminiscent of the “Nihilist” era in Russia, that is, the period
of a hundred years ago. Our experiences and suffering lay a
moral obligation on us. We are now able to perceive and tell
the world things that nobody else can tell: this is where I see
the historic mission of the peoples that inhabit what was
once Russia and is now the Soviet Union. They can point the
way out of the labyrinth in which mankind is now lost. And
this is the only way in which any of our peoples can influ-
ence the fate of mankind and hence their own fate. Each peo-
ple must of course consult its own conscience and decide
whether to take this mission upon itself. No nation must be
judged or condemned for deciding one way or the other. But
I trust it would not be regarded as tactless interference if I
express my own opinion on this question, which is one that
vitally affects us all.

Why is it thought that different peoples cannot live within
the bounds of a single state of their own free will and to the
benefit of all? If they cannot, surely one is entitled to doubt
that different individuals can do so. Recent decades, it is
true, have shown a tendency toward the formation of ever
smaller states, but this by no means proves that this trend is
correct. The small and minuscule states that have appeared
in recent times are too weak: they are doomed in all possible
respects to become dependents and hangers-on of larger
states. They can acquire power only by acting together, sub-

99

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

ordinating their individuality to a common purpose, and
always choosing the course of action that will offend no-
body — in other words, the most trivial. That is the origin of
mob rule by nations, a spectacle we are witnessing in the
United Nations at the moment. But the process is still only in
its infancy. At present there are about two thousand nations
in the world, but only some one hundred and fifty states. If
the trend toward nation-states continues, the existing states
will have to be broken down by a factor of ten or more. But
even the formation of pocket-handkerchief states brings no
relief from familiar troubles: we see that they are plagued by
the same sores of international and intertribal strife. Yet this
is the ideal solution propounded in many a samizdat study of
the national question. One of them even suggested the inter-
esting idea that there is nothing to prevent any village declar-
ing itself a state. It is worth thinking this idea through in
earnest and trying to picture such a “state.” Who will supply
it with the simplest agricultural machinery and electric light,
where will it find its teachers and doctors? And what if all
mankind follows this happy example and splits itself up into
villages? One has only to imagine it and it becomes clear
how much the author of this theory is prepared to sacrifice for
the sake of universal separatism.

There is nothing to indicate the necessity of dismembering
states into national atoms. On the contrary, different peoples
in cooperation can give birth to a culture of a higher quality
than any of them in isolation. However large the nation, its
culture acquires a new dimension it would not otherwise
have. And the geniuses of small nations achieve worldwide
significance, something that would be impossible unless they
were part of a more powerful kindred culture, as the Scots-
man Walter Scott was of the greater English culture. But the
most vivid illustration comes from our own culture — I refer,
of course, to Gogol. Great as his genius was, I do not think he
could have blossomed so profoundly or attained such a pin-
nacle of human achievement had he not been enriched by
Russian culture. And his influence on mankind would have
been negligible if all Russian culture had not been illumi-

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SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

nated with his light. Similarly with Shevchenko: 5 his prose
in Russian demonstrates his desire to be a Russian as well as
a Ukrainian writer.

I believe this path is not closed to the peoples of our coun-
try, but finding it will not be at all easy. It will require much
effort and goodwill, and changes in our usual attitudes. It
would be a great pity if readers were to think that I am ad-
vocating this effort for the non-Russian peoples only; in many
respects it is precisely the Russians who ought to be breaking
their old habits.

I do not think Russians suffer from the national arrogance
that Western Europeans display in their relations with their
Eastern neighbors and even more toward non-Europeans.
Russians mix easily with other peoples and often place too
low a value on their own culture.

But power-mania is the vice of every great nation and is
not at all foreign to the Russians. If a large country’s armies
are unloosed against a small neighbor, and if they success-
fully carry it off, then the overwhelming majority of the popu-
lace feels pride and satisfaction — this has unfortunately
been the psychology of many nations for centuries past, and
the Russians are no exception. But if we want to preserve
even the shadow of a hope of living side by side in one state
with our present neighbors, we cannot permit ourselves this
any more. And therefore when the journal Veche (As-
sembly) 6 begins its existence by describing Skobelev’s 7 con-
quests in Central Asia, as if the most important wars in our
history were those that subjugated other peoples, it looks like
some sort of deliberate provocation.

But in our attitude to other nations there is another vice

5. Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), the most famous Ukrainian poet and
writer, who was exiled for his criticisms of the tsarist government’s social
and national policies. — Trans.

6. A samizdat, or clandestine journal, that appeared in the Soviet Union
from January 1971 until early 1974 and took a strongly Russian nationalist
line.— T rans.

7. Mikhail Skobelev (1843-1882), a Russian army officer, one of the con-
querors of Turkistan and a prominent commander in the Russo-Turkish
war. — Trans.

lOX

SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

that is typically Russian: the inability to see the line that
divides us from other nations, the lack of inner conviction in
their right to exist within their own national identity. How
often have I heard Russians wondering naively why the
Ukrainians, Byelorussians or Lithuanians won’t learn proper
Russian and turn into proper Russians. All the jokes, mockery
and tactless puns on the Ukrainian language have their root
in an unwillingness to recognize the Ukrainians as a separate
nation and in a failure to understand why these “Russians”
so strangely distort our language.

This may be due to a perversion or misunderstanding of
our natural sense of equality, for we tend to think of all these
people as our equals and immediately (without consulting
them) class them as Russians. But it is easy to understand
how other peoples, especially small ones, are horrified and
infuriated by the sight of the immense Russian tide advanc-
ing on them, ready to swallow them up without a trace.

Most animals capable of killing their own kind are en-
dowed by nature with inhibitions which make such killings
impossible: no wolf can tear open the throat of another wolf
vanquished in battle, no raven can peck out the eye of an-
other raven. Neither men nor nations are equipped with the
same inhibitions; they can instill them only by a process of
spiritual development. This is the task facing the Russian
people. We cannot count on our neighbors for sympathy, or
even absence of hostility, unless we can not only see the Es-
tonians, for example, as people equal to ourselves in every
respect, but also realize how much our life has been enriched
by the proximity of this small, courageous people, who are
prepared to make any sacrifice other than renounce their
national individuality.

Is the picture I have endeavored to paint here a feasible
one? I very much want to hope it is, but to be honest I am not
sure it will work out. There is too much deep-seated resent-
ment and perhaps too little time left to neutralize it. And
perhaps the national question is the most distressing one
simply because it is the most difficult — it demands that such

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SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

complexly organized and individual entities as nations
should learn to live together without losing their individ-
uality. And perhaps we should be looking for other, less obvi-
ous ways of solving it.

But of one thing I am convinced: this question is insoluble
unless we renounce our ingrained prejudices and what Do-
stoyevsky called “shortcuts to thought.” It is insoluble on a
basis of hatred and mutual recrimination and these must be
abandoned. To this end we must endeavor to change habits
that have been built up over decades and centuries, trans-
forming the forces of repulsion into forces of attraction. This
is essential not at all simply in order to try to preserve the
links that exist between our country’s peoples; everyone with
a responsible attitude toward the destiny of his own people,
however he regards its future, should feel bound to exert
every effort in the same direction.

Some affinity of outlook and a certain ability to understand
one another are essential, not only in order to be able to live
together, but also in order to be able to part company.

As V. Maklakov 8 once intriguingly put it: nationalists gen-
erally demand plebiscites, believing that so long as the ma-
jority in their region plump for secession, they should be
granted independence. In other words, they believe the
question can be settled by a majority vote in their region, al-
though they are, of course, a minority in the state as a whole.
Conversely, their will, which is a minority one in the state as
a whole, is supposed to prevail, while the minority in their
own region, who oppose secession, must bow to the majority.

Of course there can come a moment in the history of na-
tions when all spiritual links are broken and living together
in one state only exacerbates mutual animosity. But Makla-
kov’s idea strikes me as an interesting paradox, which dem-
onstrates, by taking a logical conclusion to absurdity, that
neither plebiscites nor the introduction of United Nations
forces can solve the delicate and organic problems facing the

8. V. A. Maklakov (1870-1957) was a leading member of the Constitutional
Democratic party (“Cadets”) before the October revolution. In 1938 he pub-
lished his memoirs, The First State Duma.— Trans.

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SEPARATION OR RECONCILIATION?

nations of today. Whatever the ultimate solution may be, the
only healthy path to it is through the rapprochement of peo-
ples. The only alternative that remains is the path of force,
along which each solution is doomed to be only temporary
and to lead inexorably to the next, even graver crisis.

There are, at least, real grounds for hope that in many re-
spects the lessons of the past have not been totally wasted on
our peoples. Our experience has inoculated us against many
temptations — but not all. Class hatred can probably never
again light the flame that engulfs our house in time of trou-
ble — but national hatred easily could. We can feel its warn-
ing tremors already, and they enable us to judge how
destructive it could be once it erupted onto the surface. We
must not be so naive as to suppose that any man could direct
this elemental force into acceptable channels — the forces of
hatred and violence are subject to their own laws and always
consume those who unleash them.

And who can say which nations will survive yet another
cataclysm, perhaps more terrible than any they have been
obliged to endure so far?

Herein lies the last reason for the extreme acuteness of the
national question — it may well become a question of the
continued existence of our peoples.

104

Repentance and Self-Limitation
in the Life of Nations

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

ONE

The Blessed Augustine once wrote: “What is the state
without justice? A band of robbers.” Even now, fifteen cen-
turies later, many people will, I think, readily recognize the
force and accuracy of this judgment. But let us note what he
is about: an ethical judgment about a small group of people is
applied by extension to the state.

It is in our human nature to make such judgments: to apply
ordinary, individual, human values and standards to larger
social phenomena and associations of people, up to and in-
cluding the nation and the state as a whole. And many in-
stances of this transference can be found in writers through
the ages.

The social sciences, however, and particularly the more
modem of them, strictly forbid such extensions of meaning.
Only economic, statistical, demographic, ideological, to a
lesser extent geographical, and — very dubiously — psycho-
logical procedures are held to guarantee the serious
scientific character of research into society and the state,
while the evaluation of political life by ethical yardsticks is
considered totally provincial.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

Yet people do not cease to be people just because they live
in social agglomerations, nor do they lose the age-old human
impulses and feelings — we all know the spectrum; all they
do is express them more crudely, sometimes keeping them in
check, sometimes giving them free rein. It is hard to under-
stand the arrogant insensitivity of the modem trend in the
social sciences: why are the standards and demands so neces-
sarily and readily applied to individuals, families, small
groups and personal relations, rejected out of hand and ut-
terly prohibited when we go on to deal with thousands and
millions of people in association? The arguments in favor of
such an extension are certainly no weaker than those for de-
ducing the complex psychological delusions of societies from
crude economic processes. The barrier against transference
of values is in any case lower where the principle itself un-
dergoes no transformation, where we are not being asked to
beget the living upon the dead, but only to project the self
onto larger quantities of human beings.

The transference of values is entirely natural to the re-
ligious cast of mind: human society cannot be exempted from
the laws and demands which constitute the aim and meaning
of individual human lives. But even without a religious foun-
dation, this sort of transference is readily and naturally made.
It is very human to apply even to the biggest social events or
human organizations, including whole states and the United
Nations, our spiritual values: noble, base, courageous, cow-
ardly, hypocritical, false, cruel, magnanimous, just, unjust,
and so on. Indeed, everybody writes this way, even the most
extreme economic materialists, since they remain after all
human beings. And clearly, whatever feelings predominate
in the members of a given society at a given moment in time,
they will serve to color the whole of that society and deter-
mine its moral character. And if there is nothing good there
to pervade that society, it will destroy itself, or be brutalized
by the triumph of evil instincts, no matter where the pointer
of the great economic laws may turn.

And it is open to every one of us, whether learned or not,
to choose — and profitably choose — not to evade the exami-

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

nation of social phenomena with reference to the categories
of individual spiritual life and individual ethics.

We shall try to do this here with reference to only two such
categories: repentance and self-limitation.

TWO

Whether the transference of individual human qualities to
society is easy or difficult in a general way, it is immensely
difficult when the desired moral quality has been almost
completely rejected by individual human beings themselves.
This is the case with repentance. The gift of repentance,
which perhaps more than anything else distinguishes man
from the animal world, is particularly difficult for modem
man to recover. We have, every last one of us, grown
ashamed of this feeling; and its effect on social life anywhere
on earth is less and less easy to discern. The habit of repen-
tance is lost to our whole callous and chaotic age.

How then can we transfer to society and the nation that
which does not exist on the individual level? Perhaps this ar-
ticle is premature or altogether pointless? We start, however,
from what seems to us beyond doubt: that true repentance
and self-limitation will shortly reappear in the personal and
the social sphere, that a hollow place in modem man is ready
to receive them. Obviously then the time has come to con-
sider this as a path for whole nations to follow. Our under-
standing of it must not lag behind the inevitable devel-
opment of self-generating governmental policies.

We have so bedeviled the world, brought it so close to self-
destruction, that repentance is now a matter of life and
death — not for the sake of a life beyond the grave (which is
thought merely comic nowadays), but for the sake of our life
here and now and our very survival on this earth. The end of
the world, so often foretold by the prophets only to be post-
poned, has ceased to be the particular property of mystics
and confronts us as sober reality, scientifically, technically
and psychologically warranted. It is no longer just the danger

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

of a nuclear world war — we have grown used to that and can
take it in our stride. But the calculations of the ecologists
show us that we are caught in a trap: either we change our
ways and abandon our destructively greedy pursuit of prog-
ress, or else in the twenty-first century, whatever the pace of
man’s development, we will perish as a result of the total
exhaustion, barrenness and pollution of the planet.

Add to this the white-hot tension between nations and
races and we can say without suspicion of overstatement that
without repentance it is in any case doubtful if we can
survive.

It is by now only too obvious how dearly mankind has paid
for the fact that we have all throughout the ages preferred to
censure, denounce and hate others, instead of censuring, de-
nouncing and hating ourselves. But obvious though it may
be, we are even now, with the twentieth century on its way
out, reluctant to recognize that the universal dividing line be-
tween good and evil runs not between countries, not be-
tween nations, not between parties, not between classes, not
even between good and bad men: the dividing line cuts
across nations and parties, shifting constantly, yielding now
to the pressure of light, now to the pressure of darkness. It
divides the heart of every man, and there too it is not a ditch
dug once and for all, but fluctuates with the passage of time
and according to a man’s behavior.

If we accept just this one fact, which has been made plain,
especially by art, a thousand times before, what way out re-
mains to us? Not the embittered strife of parties or nations,
not the struggle to win some delusive victory — for all the fe-
rocious causes already in being — but simply repentance and
the search for our own errors and sins. We must stop blaming
everyone else — our neighbors and more distant peoples, our
geographical, economic or ideological rivals, always claiming
that we alone are in the right.

Repentance is the first bit of firm ground underfoot, the
only one from which we can go forward not to fresh hatreds
but to concord. Repentance is the only starting point for spiri-
tual growth.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

For each and every individual.

And every trend of social thought.

True, repentant political parties are about as frequently en-
countered in history as tiger-doves. (Politicians of course can
still repent — many of them do not lose their human quali-
ties. But parties are obviously utterly inhuman formations,
and the very object of their existence precludes repentance.)

Nations, on the other hand, are very vital formations, sus-
ceptible to all moral feelings, including — however painful a
step it may be — repentance. “An ethical idea has always
preceded the birth of a nation,” says Dostoyevsky (in his
Diary of a Writer ). The examples he gives are those of the
Hebrew nation, founded only after Moses; and the several
Moslem nations founded after the appearance of the Koran.
“And when with the passage of time a nation’s spiritual ideal
is sapped, that nation falls, together with all its civil statutes
and ideals.” How then can a nation be defrauded of its right
to repent?

But here certain doubts at once arise, if only the following:

(1) Is it not senseless to expect repentance from a whole
nation — does this not assume that the sin, the vice, the de-
fect is that of the whole nation? But this way of thinking —
judging nations as a whole, talking about the qualities or
traits of a whole nation — has been strictly forbidden to us
for at least a hundred years.

(2) The mass of the nation as a whole does not perform
united actions. Indeed, under many systems of government,
the mass can neither obstruct nor contribute to the decisions
of its leaders. What should it repent of?

And finally, even if we dismiss the first two points:

(3) How can the nation as a whole express its repentance?
Surely only through the mouths and by the pens of indi-
viduals?

Let us try to answer these questions.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

THREE

(1) Those who set the highest value on the existence of the
nation, who see in it not the ephemeral fruit of social forma-
tions but a complex, vivid, unrepeatable organism not in-
vented by man, recognize that nations have a full spiritual
life, that they can soar to the heights and plunge to the
depths, run the whole gamut from saintliness to utter wicked-
ness (although only individuals ever reach the extremes). Of
course, great changes occur with the passage of time and the
movement of history. That shifting boundary between good
and evil, of which we spoke, oscillates continuously in the
consciousness of a nation, sometimes very violently, so that
judgments, reproaches, self-reproaches and even repentance
itself are bound up with a specific time and pass away with it,
leaving only vestigial contours behind to remind history of
their existence.

But then, individuals too change beyond recognition in the
course of their lives, under the influence of events and of
their own spiritual endeavors (and man’s hope, salvation and
punishment lie in this, that we are capable of change, and
that we ourselves, not our birth or our environment, are re-
sponsible for our souls!). Yet we venture to label people
“good” or “bad,” and our right to do so is not usually ques-
tioned.

The profoundest similarity between the individual and the
nation lies in the mystical nature of their “givenness.” And
human logic can show no cause why, if we permit value judg-
ments on the one mutable entity, we should forbid them in
the case of the other. To do so is a mere face-saving conven-
tion, or perhaps a precaution against their careless misappli-
cation.

If we continue to base ourselves on intuitive perceptions,
to consult our feelings and not the dictates of positivist
knowledge, we shall find that national sympathies and an-
tipathies do exist in the vast majority of people. Sometimes

no

REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

they are shared only by a particular circle, large or small, and
can only be uttered there (not too loudly for fear of offending
against the spirit of the times), but sometimes these feelings
(of love, or alas more often than not of hate) are so strong that
they overwhelm whole nations and are boldly, even aggres-
sively, trumpeted abroad. Often such feelings arise from fal-
lacious or superficial experience. They are always relatively
short-lived, flaring up and dying down again from time to
time, but they do exist, and very emphatically. Everyone
knows it is so, and only hypocrisy forbids us to talk about it.

The changing conditions of its life, and changing external
circumstances, determine whether a nation has anything to
repent of today. Perhaps it has not. But because of the mu-
tability of all existence, a nation can no more live without sin
than can an individual. It is impossible to imagine a nation
which throughout the course of its whole existence has no
cause for repentance. Every nation without exception, how-
ever persecuted, however cheated, however flawlessly right-
eous it feels itself to be today, has certainly at one time or
another contributed its share of inhumanity, injustice and ar-
rogance.

There are only too many examples, hosts of them, and this
article is not a historical inquiry. It is a matter for special con-
sideration in each particular case how much time must elapse
before a sin ceases to weigh on the national conscience. Tur-
key bears the still-fresh guilt of the Armenian massacres, yet
for centuries before that she persecuted the Balkan Slavs —
is the guilt for the latter still a living thing, or a thing of the
past? (Let the impatient reader not rebuke me for not begin-
ning immediately with Russia. Russia’s turn of course will
come soon enough — what else would you expect from a
Russian?)

(2) No one would now dispute that the British, French and
Dutch peoples as a whole bear the guilt (and marks on their
souls) for the colonial policies of their governments. Their
system of government allowed for considerable obstruction
to be placed in the way of colonialism by society. But there
was little obstruction of this sort, and the nation was drawn

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

into this seductive enterprise, with some individuals partici-
pating, others supporting and others merely accepting it.

Here is a case much nearer to hand, from the middle of the
twentieth century, when public opinion in Western countries
practically determines government behavior. After the Sec-
ond World War the British and American authorities made a
deal with their Soviet counterparts and systematically
handed over in southern Europe (Austria and Italy) hundreds
of thousands of civilian refugees from the USSR (over and
above repatriated troops) who had no desire to return to their
native land, handed them over deceitfully, without warning,
contrary to their expectations and wishes, and in effect sent
them to their death — probably half of them were destroyed
by the camps. The relevant documents have been carefully
concealed up to now. But there were living witnesses,
knowledge of these events filtered out to the British and
Americans, and during the past quarter of a century there
have been plenty of opportunities in those countries to make
inquiries, raise an outcry, bring the guilty to judgment. But
no one has raised a finger. The reason is that the West today
sees the sufferings of Eastern Europe in a distant haze. Com-
placency, however, has never purged anyone of guilt. It is
just because of this complacent silence that the vile treachery
of the military authorities has seeped into and stained the na-
tional conscience of those countries. Yet the voice of repen-
tance has still not been heard.

In Uganda today the mettlesome General Amin expels
Asians supposedly on his own personal responsibility, but
there is no doubt that he has the self-interested approval of a
population which battens on the spoils of the deported. This
is how the Ugandans have set out on the path of nationhood,
and, as in all countries which previously suffered oppression
and now frantically aspire to physical might, repentance is
the very last feeling they are about to experience.

It would be much less simple to demonstrate the responsi-
bility of the Albanians for the behavior of their fanatical
ruler, whose own country bears the full brunt of his tyranny
only because he lacks the strength to turn upon others. But

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

the enthusiastic layer of the population which keeps him in
orbit must surely have been recruited from ordinary Albanian
families?

This is the peculiar feature of integrated organisms — that
all their parts benefit and suffer alike from the activity of
each organ. Even when the majority of the population is
quite powerless to obstruct its political leaders, it is fated to
answer for their sins and their mistakes. Even in the most to-
talitarian states, whose subjects have no rights at all, we all
bear responsibility — not only for the quality of our govern-
ment, but also for the campaigns of our military leaders, for
the deeds of our soldiers in the line of duty, for the shots
fired by our frontier guards, for the songs of our young
people.

“For the sins of the fathers” — the saying is thousands of
years old. How, you may ask, can we repent on their be-
half — we weren’t even alive at the time I We are even less
responsible than the subjects of a totalitarian regime I But the
saying is not an idle one, and we have only too often seen
and still see children paying for the fathers.

The nation is mystically welded together in a community
of guilt, and its inescapable destiny is common repentance.

(3) Individual expressions of this common repentance are
dubiously representative, for we cannot know whether those
who make them speak with authority. And they are extremely
difficult for the people who make them. Individual repen-
tance is one thing: the counsels of outsiders, or even of those
close to you, carry no weight once you have wholeheartedly
committed yourself. But the man who takes it upon himself
to express the repentance of a nation, on the other hand, will
always be exposed to weighty dissuasions, reproaches, and
warnings not to bring shame upon his country or give comfort
to its enemies. Moreover, if in your own person you pro-
nounce words of repentance on behalf of society as a whole,
you must inevitably distribute the blame, indicating the
various degrees of culpability of various groups — and that
necessarily changes the spirit and tone of repentance and casts
a shadow on it. It is only at a historical distance that we can

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unerringly judge to what degree one man has expressed a
genuine change of heart in his nation.

But it can happen — and Russia is a striking example of
this — that repentance is expressed not just once and mo-
mentarily by a single writer or orator, but becomes the nor-
mal mood of all thinking society. Thus in the nineteenth
century a repentant mood spread among the Russian upper-
class intelligentsia (and so overwhelmed them that the peni-
tents ceased to acknowledge any good in themselves or any
sin in the common people), then gathered force, took in the
middle-class intelligentsia as well, and, translating itself into
action, became a historical movement with incalculable —
and even counterproductive — consequences.

The repentance of a nation expresses itself most surely and
palpably in its actions. In its finite actions.

Even in our own calculating and impenitent age we see a
powerful movement of repentance in the country which
bears the guilt for two world wars. Not, alas, in the whole na-
tion. Only in that half (or three-quarters) where the ideology
of hate does not stand like an impregnable concrete wall in
the way of repentance.

This repentance, not just in words, in protestations, but in
real actions, in large concessions, was dramatically mani-
fested to us in Chancellor Brandt’s “ Canossa-Reise ” to War-
saw, to Auschwitz, and then to Israel, and found further
expression in his whole Ost-Politik. From a practical point of
view, this policy seems less carefully weighed and balanced
than “policies” generally are. It was bom, perhaps, of moral
imperatives, in the cloudy atmosphere of penitence which
hung over Germany after the Second World War. This is
what makes it remarkable — that an ethical impulse, rather
than political calculation, lies behind it — and it is just the
sort of noble and generous impulse which one longs to see
today in other nations and countries (and above all in our
ownl). It would have vindicated itself in practical terms too if
it had met with a similar spiritual response from the East Eu-
ropean partners, instead of grasping political greed.

It is, however, only fitting that a Russian author, writing for

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

Russia, should turn to the question of Russia’s need to re-
pent. This article is written with faith in the natural procliv-
ity of Russians to repent, in our ability even as things are
now to find the penitential impulse in ourselves and set the
whole world an example.

Significantly, one of the fundamental proverbs expressing
the Russian view of the world was (at any rate before the rev-
olution) “God is not in might but in right." This belief may
be partly natural to us, but was powerfully reinforced by the
Orthodox faith, which was once sincerely embraced by the
whole mass of the people. (It is only nowadays that we are
persuaded, almost to a man, that “might is right,” and act ac-
cordingly.)

We were generously endowed with the gift of repentance:
at one time it irrigated a broad tract of the Russian character.
Not for nothing was the “day of forgiveness” such a high
point in our calendar. In the distant past (until the seven-
teenth century) Russia was so rich in penitential movements
that repentance was among the most prominent Russian na-
tional characteristics. Upsurges of repentance, or rather of
religious penitence on a mass scale, were in the spirit of pre-
Petrine Russia: it would begin separately, in many hearts,
and merge into a powerful current. This is probably the no-
blest and only true way of broad, popular repentance. Klyu-
chevsky , 1 studying the economic documents on ancient
Russia, found many cases of Russians moved by repentance
to forgive debts, to cancel debt-slavery or set their bondsmen
fiee, and this did much to soften the force of cruel laws. Inor-
dinate accumulations of wealth were mitigated by lavish
bequests to charity. We know how very many penitents re-
tired to religious settlements, hermits’ cells and monasteries.
The chronicles and ancient Russian literature alike abound
in examples of repentance. And Ivan the Terrible’s terror
never became so all-embracing or systematic as Stalin’s,
largely because the tsar repented and came to his senses.

l. Vasily Klyuchevsky (1841-1911), most distinguished Russian national his-
torian of the nineteenth century, author of A Course of Russian History.
— Trans.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

But with the soulless reforms of Nikon 2 and Peter the
Great began the extirpation and suppression of the Russian
national spirit, and our capacity for repentance also began to
wither and dry up. The monstrous punishment of the Old
Believers — the burnings at the stake, the red-hot pincers,
the impalements on meat hooks, the dungeons — followed
for two and a half centuries by the senseless repression of
twelve million meek and defenseless fellow-countrymen,
and their dispersal to the most uninhabitable regions of the
country or even expulsion from the country — all this is a sin
for which the established Church has never proclaimed its
repentance. This was bound to weigh heavily on the whole
future of Russia. Yet all that happened was that in 1905 the
persecuted were forgiven (too late, far too late, to save the
persecutors).

The whole Petersburg period of our history — a period of
external greatness, of imperial conceit — drew the Russian
spirit even farther from repentance. So far that we managed
to preserve serfdom for a century or more after it had become
unthinkable, keeping the greater part of our own people in a
slavery which robbed them of all human dignity. So far that
even the upsurge of repentance on the part of thinking soci-
ety came too late to appease angry minds, but engulfed us in
the clouds of a new savagery, brought a pitiless rain of venge-
ful blows on our heads, an unprecedented terror, and the re-
turn, after seventy years, of serfdom in a still worse form.

In the twentieth century the blessed dews of repentance
could no longer soften the parched Russian soil, baked hard
by doctrines of hate. In the past sixty years we have not
merely lost the gift of repentance in our public life but have
ridiculed it. This feeling was precipitately abandoned and
made an object of contempt, the place in the soul where

2. Patriarch Nikon was patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church under Tsar
Aleksei Mikhailovich from 1652 to 1667 (although the latter half of this period
was spent in retirement). He initiated a series of sweeping reforms in eccle-
siastical and secular custom designed to modernize and strengthen the
Church, but resulting in serious schism. His reforms were accepted, but si-
multaneously led to his own downfall as patriarch. Meanwhile the schisma-
tics, who clung to the old customs and rites, became known as the Old
Believers.”— Trans.

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repentance once dwelt was laid waste. For half a century
now we have acted on the conviction that the guilty ones
were the tsarist establishment, the bourgeois patriots, social
democrats, White Guards, priests, emigres, subversives, ku-
laks, henchmen of kulaks, engineers, “wreckers,” 3 opposi-
tionists, enemies of the people, nationalists, Zionists,
imperialists, militarists, even modernists — anyone and ev-
eryone except you and me I Obviously it was they, not we,
who had to reform. But they dug their heels in and refused
to. So how could they be made to reform, except by bayonets
(revolvers, barbed wire, starvation)?

One of the peculiarities of Russian history is that our evil
doing has always, even up to the present day, taken the same
direction: we have done evil on a massive scale and mainly
in our own country, not abroad, not to others, but at home to
our own people, to ourselves. No one has borne so much of
the suffering as the Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians.
So that as we awaken to repentance we shall have to re-
member much that concerns only us, and for which outsiders
will not reproach us.

Will it be easy for us honestly to remember it all, when we
have lost all feeling for truth? We, the present older and
middle generations, have spent our whole lives floundering
and wallowing in the stinking swamp of a society based on
force and fraud — how could we escape defilement? Are
there naturally angelic characters — gliding as it were
weightlessly above the slime without ever sinking into it,
even when their feet touch its surface? We have all met such
people — Russia is not so short of them as all that. They are
the “just,” we have all seen them and marveled (“such funny
people”), profited from their goodness, repaid them in kind
in our better moments, for we can’t help liking them, and
then plunged back into the depths to which we are doomed.
We have floundered, some (the lucky ones) ankle-deep, some
knee-deep, some waist-deep, some up to our necks, accord-
ing to the changing circumstances and our peculiarities of

3. The name applied to alleged industrial saboteurs in the twenties.
—Trans.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

character, while some were totally immersed and only oc-
casional bubbles from a not quite dead soul reached the sur-
face to remind us of their existence.

But who, if not we ourselves, constitutes society P This
realm of darkness, of falsehood, of brute force, of justice de-
nied and distrust of the good, this slimy swamp was formed
by us, and no one else. We grew used to the idea that we
must submit and lie in order to survive — and we brought up
our children to do so. Each of us, if he honestly reviews the
life he has led, without special pleading or concealment, will
recall more than one occasion on which he pretended not to
hear a cry for help, averted his indifferent eyes from an im-
ploring gaze, burned letters and photographs which it was
his duty to keep, forgot someone’s name or dropped certain
widows, turned his back on prisoners under escort, and —
but of course — always voted, rose to his feet and applauded
obscenities (even though he felt obscene while he was doing
it) — how, otherwise, could we survive? How, moreover,
could the great Archipelago have endured in our midst for
fifty years unnoticed?

Need I mention the common or garden informers, traitors
and sadists of whom there must surely have been more than
one million, or how could such an Archipelago have been
managed?

And if we now long — and there is a glimmer of hope that
we do — to go forward at last into a just, clean, honest so-
ciety — how else can we do so except by shedding the bur-
den of our past, except by repentance, for we are all guilty,
all besmirched? We cannot convert the kingdom of universal
falsehood into a kingdom of universal truth by even the clev-
erest and most skillfully contrived economic and social re-
forms: these are the wrong building bricks . 4

4. The line of repentance becomes easier and clearer to follow if it is com-
pared with the line traced by the defense of civil rights. Here is a fresh
recent example that puts the whole thing in a nutshell. Some years ago a
now well-known dissident wrote a film script in the course of his normal, of-
ficially approved artistic career which was highly thought of and allowed
onto the country’s cinema screens — which means it is not difficult to guess
at its spiritual value. On the occasion of some recent diplomatic triumph it

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But if millions pour out their repentance, their confessions,
their contrite sorrow — not all of them perhaps publicly, but
among friends and people who know them — what could
all this together be called except “the repentance of the
nation”?

But here our endeavor, like any attempt to summon a na-
tion to repentance, runs into objections from within: Russia
has suffered so much that she cannot be asked to repent as
well, she must be pitied, not tormented with reminders of
her sins.

And it is true. No country in the twentieth century has suf-
fered like ours, which within its own borders has destroyed
as many as seventy million people over and above those lost
in the world wars — no one in modem history has experi-
enced such destruction. And it is true: it is painful to chide
where one must pity. But repentance is always painful, other-
wise it would have no moral value. Those people were not
the victims of flood or earthquake. There were innocent vic-
tims and guilty victims, but they would never have reached
such a terrifying total if they had suffered only at the hands of
others: we, all of us, Russia herself were the necessary ac-
complices.

An even harsher, colder point of view, or rather current of
opinion, has become discernible of late. Stripped to essen-
tials, but not distorted, it goes like this: the Russian people is
the noblest in the world; its ancient and its modem history
are alike unblemished; tsarism and Bolshevism are equally
irreproachable; the nation neither erred nor sinned either
before 1917 or after; we have suffered no loss of moral stature
and therefore have no need of self-improvement; there are no

was thought appropriate to exhibit this film once more, but the name of the
now offending scriptwriter was cut out And what was the scriptwriter’s reac-
tion? What would have been the most natural thing to do? The line of repen-
tance would have indicated joy and satisfaction that he had, as it were, been
automatically relieved of the disgrace of this former spiritual compromise
and reprieved of an ancient sin. Might he not even have made a public state-
ment about his feelings of absolution? Well, the scriptwriter certainly made
a public statement, but it was a protest, asserting his right to have his name
on the film. The infringement of his civil rights struck him as more important
than the opportunity to purge himself of a previous sin. [A.S., 1974.]

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nationality problems in relations with the border republics —
Lenin’s and Stalin’s solution was ideal; communism is in feet
unthinkable without patriotism; the prospects of Russia-
USSR are brilliant; blood alone determines whether one is
Russian or non-Russian. As for things spiritual, all trends are
admissible. Orthodoxy is not the least bit more Russian than
Marxism, atheism, the scientific outlook, or, shall we say,
Hinduism. God need not be written with a capital letter, but
Government must be.

Their general name for all this is “the Russian idea.” (A
more precise name for this trend would be “National Bol-
shevism.”)

“We are Russians, what rapture,” cried Suvorov. 6 “And
how fraught with danger to the soul,” added F. Stepun 6 after
our revolutionary experiences.

As we understand it patriotism means unqualified and un-
wavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical
eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank as-
sessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them. We
ought to get used to the idea that no people is eternally great
or eternally noble (such titles are hard won and easily lost);
that the greatness of a people is to be sought not in the blare
of trumpets — physical might is purchased at a spiritual price
beyond our means — but in the level of its inner develop-
ment, in its breadth of soul (fortunately one of nature’s gifts
to us), in unarmed moral steadfastness (in which the Czechs
and Slovaks recently gave Europe a lesson, without however
troubling its conscience more than briefly).

In what we may call the neo-Muscovite period the conceit
of the preceding Petersburg period has become grosser and
blinder. And this has led us even farther from a penitential
state of mind, so that it is not easy to convince our fellow-
countrymen, to force on them an awareness that we Russians
are not traversing the heavens in a blaze of glory but sitting
forlornly on a heap of spiritual cinders. And unless we re-

5. Alexander Suvorov (1729-1800), celebrated general who led the Swiss
and Italian campaigns against Napoleon. — Trans.

6. Fyodor Stepun (1884-1965), Russian philosopher who was expelled from
the Soviet Union in 1922. — Trans.

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cover the gift of repentance, our country will perish and will
drag down the whole world with it.

Only through the repentance of a multitude of people can
the air and the soil of Russia be cleansed so that a new,
healthy national life can grow up. We cannot raise a clean
crop on a false, unsound, obdurate soil.

FOUR

If we try to make an act of national repentance we must be
ready for hostility and resistance on the one hand, and impas-
sioned efforts to lead us astray on the other. S. Bulgakov 7 has
written that “only suffering love gives one the right to chas-
tise one’s own nation.” 8 You would think it was impossible
to take it upon oneself to “repent” on behalf of a nation to
which one felt alien or even hostile. Yet people eager to do
just this have already come forward. Given the obscurity of
our recent history, the destruction of archives, the disappear-
ance of evidence, our defenselessness against all sorts of pre-
sumptuous and unproven judgments and all sorts of galling
distortions, we can probably expect many such attempts. And
we already have the first of them, a fairly resolute effort
which claims to be nothing less than an act of “national re-
pentance.”

We cannot pass it by unexamined. I am speaking of articles
in the Vestnik RSKD 9 No. 97, and particularly “Metanoia”
(self-condemnation, self-examination — a term taken from
the same Bulgakov writing in 1910) by the anonymous NN,
and “Russian Messianism” by the pseudonymous Gorsky.

Even the boldest works of samizdat always have an eye to
the surrounding circumstances. But here, writing in a foreign
publication and anonymously, the authors have absolutely no
apprehension either for themselves or for their readers and
therefore seize the chance to pour out their hearts for just

7. See note on page 20 . — Trans.

8. In Two Cities, Moscow, 1910, 2nd edition, p. 289.

9. See pages 95 to 96 and note on page 96 . — Trans.

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once in their lives — an urge entirely understandable to any
Soviet person. Their tone could not be sharper, and the style
becomes informal, even impertinent. The authors fear nei-
ther the authorities nor the critical reader: they are will-o’-
the-wisps, safe from discovery; there is no arguing with
them. This makes them still more uncompromising in their
conduct of the case against Russia. There is not the slightest
hint that the authors share any complicity with their coun-
trymen, with the rest of us; there is nothing but denunciation
of the irredeemably vicious Russian people and a tone of
contempt for those who have been led astray. Nowhere do
we feel that the authors think of themselves and their readers
as “we.” Living among us, they call on us to repent, while
they themselves remain unassailable and guiltless. (The pun-
ishment for this alienness extends even to their language,
which is quite un-Russian and in the tradition of those in-
stant translations from Western philosophy which people
were forever rushing out in the nineteenth century.)

These articles solemnly bury Russia, with a bayonet thrust
just in case — just as prisoners in the camps are buried: it’s
too much trouble to make sure whether the man’s dead, just
bayonet him and sling him in the burial trench.

Here are a few of their statements.

“When it began its revolt against God, the Russian people
knew that the socialist religion could be made a reality only
through despotism 1” (Gorsky).

When were we, in our birchbark sandals, so mature and
perceptive? The revolt was started by the intelligentsia, but
it too did not know what can be so effortlessly formulated in
the seventies of the twentieth century.

“More Evil has been brought into the world by Russia than
by any other country” (NN).

We shall not say that Russia has brought little evil into the
world. But did the so-called Great French Revolution, did
France, that is, bring less? Is there any way of calculating?
What of the Third Reich? Or Marxism as such? Not to go any
further. . . . And there is another side to the question: per-
haps our inhuman experience, paid for mainly with our own

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blood and that of the peoples nearest akin to us, has even
benefited some of earth’s more distant inhabitants? Perhaps
in some places it has taught the obtuse ruling classes to make
a few concessions? Perhaps the liberation of the colonial
world was not entirely uninfluenced by the October revolu-
tion — as a reaction to it, to prevent a repetition of what hap-
pened to us — God alone can know, and it is not for us to
judge which country has done most evil.

“In the revolution the people proved to be an imaginary
quantity. ... Its own national culture is completely alien to
the Russian people.” The proof: “In the first years of the rev-
olution icons were found useful for firewood, and churches
for building material” (Gorsky).

There you have it: anybody who feels like it can come
along with a snap judgment, because our chronicles have
been obliterated. If the people proved to be an imaginary
quantity — how can it be blamed for the revolution, what-
ever other charges are brought against it? If it proved to be
an imaginary quantity — who was resisting the revolution in
the peasant risings which inundated Tambov and Siberia?
The people had to be reduced to “imaginary” status by long
years of destruction, oppression and seduction — and this de-
struction is just what Gorsky appears not to know about. It
was a complicated process — and how simple he has made it.
In 1918 Russian peasants rose in defense of the Church —
several hundred such risings were put down by Red arms. Of
course, after the clergy had been destroyed, after defenders
of the faith among die peasantry and in urban parishes
had been massacred and all the rest terrorized — while
the Komsomols 10 and Communist youth organizations
grew up in the meantime — after all this they did indeed go
and wreck the churches with crowbars (but even then it was
mainly the work of Komsomol members who were specially
hired for this purpose). Ever since, in the northern regions,
icons have been, not “sold for a song” to treasure-hunters
from Moscow, as our well-informed author writes (true, they

10. Komsomol: the Russian abbreviation for the League of Young Commu-
nists, the youth arm of the Communist party. — Trans.

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sometimes change hands for a bottle), but given away: it is
considered a sin to take money for them. Whereas the pro-
gressive young intellectuals who receive such a gift quite
often do a profitable trade with foreigners.

But most of the heat and space in this bulky publication are
devoted to the denunciation of Russian messianism.

“Overcoming the national messianic delusion is Russia's
most urgent task.” Russian messianism is more tenacious of
life than Russia itself: Russia, we are told, is dead, of “ar-
chaeological” interest, like Byzantium, but its messianism is
not dead, it has simply been reborn as Soviet messianism
(Gorsky).

This cunning perversion of our history comes as such a
surprise that it is not immediately discernible. The author
begins by tracing in exaggeratedly academic fashion the “his-
tory” of our ill-starred and deathless messianism, which how-
ever was for some reason not always discernible in Russia:
for two centuries (the fifteenth to the seventeenth) it was in
evidence, then missing for the next two, then it reemerged in
the nineteenth century (apparently the intelligentsia was
“carried away” by it — does anyone remember anything of
the kind?), it disguised itself during the revolution as “prole-
tarian messianism,” and in recent decades has tom off its
mask and once more revealed itself as Russian messianism.
So, traveling via dotted lines, sophistries, and abrupt transi-
tions, the idea of the Third Rome suddenly surfaces again in
the guise of the Third International! 11 With the obsessive
thoroughness of hate, our whole history is arbitrarily dis-
torted for some never quite graspable purpose — and all this
is speciously represented as an act of repentance! The blows
seem to be aimed only at the Third Rome and messianism —
then suddenly we discover that the breakers hammer is not
smashing dilapidated walls but pounding the last spark of life

11. “Third Rome” refers to the medieval Russian religious belief that after
the fall of Constantinople (the “second Rome”) in 1492, Moscow would
become the center of Christendom and a “third Rome.” The “Third Interna-
tional,” or Comintern, was a world organization of Communist parties that
existed from 1919 to 1943 with the aim of conquering the world for com-
munism. — Trans.

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out of the long dormant, barely surviving Russian national
consciousness. See how keen his aim is:

“The Russian idea is the main content of Bolshevism”!
“The crisis of the Communist idea is the crisis of that source
of faith by which Russia lived so long” (“for centuries,” ac-
cording to the context).

See how they turn us inside out and trample us. Russia
“lived so long” by the Orthodox faith, as everybody kpows.
But the main content of Bolshevism is unbridled militant
atheism and class hatred. Still, according to our neo-Christian
authors, it all comes to the same thing. The tradition of fanati-
cal atheism is received into the tradition of ancient Ortho-
doxy. Is the “Russian idea,” then, the “main content” of an
international doctrine which came to us from the West?
When Marat called for “a million heads” and asserted that
the hungry have the right to eat the well-fed (how well we
know such situations!) — was this also the “Russian mes-
sianic consciousness” at work? Sixteenth-century Germany
seethed with communistic movements — so why, when this
“Russian idea” was about, did nothing similar happen during
the Time of Troubles in seventeenth-century Russia?

“Revolution could exercise its fatal fascination only be-
cause of Russia’s ecumenical pride” (NN).

How can we tie these loose ends together? If tsarism
rested on “Russia’s ecumenical pride,” how can revolution,
which brought down the tsarist structure in ruins, also origi-
nate in “Russian pride”?

“Proletarian messianism is taking on a blatantly Russophile
character” (Chelnov).

This is in our own day, when half the Russian people live
like serfs, without internal passports. Have we memory and
courage enough to recall the first fifteen years after the revo-
lution, when “proletarian messianism took on a blatantly”
Russophobe character? The years from 1918 to 1933, when
“proletarian messianism” destroyed the flower of the Russian
people, the flower of the old classes — gentry, merchants,
clergy — then the flower of the intelligentsia, then the flower
of the peasantry? What shall we say of the time before it

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acquired its “blatantly Russophile character,” and had a bla-
tantly Russophobe character?

“Bolshevism is an organic outgrowth of Russian life” (NN
and Chelnov).

Whether this is so or not will be much debated for a long
time to come. And it cannot be decided in heated polemics,
but only by detailed and carefully documented research.
Quiet Flows the Don 12 — the authentic version, undistorted
by illiterate interpolations — offers more useful evidence
than a dozen modem publicists. Our scholars and artists will
long be debating whether the Russian revolution was the
consequence of a moral upheaval that had already taken
place among the people, or vice versa. And when they do, let
none of the circumstances passed over here be forgotten.

Of course, once it was victorious on Russian soil the move-
ment was bound to draw Russian forces in its wake and ac-
quire Russian features 1 But let us remember the international
forces of the revolution tool Did not the revolution through-
out its early years have some of the characteristics of a
foreign invasion? When in a foraging party, or the punitive
detachment which came down to destroy a mral district,
there would be Finns and there would be Austrians, but
hardly anyone who spoke Russian? When the organs of the
Cheka 13 teemed with Latvians, Poles, Jews, Hungarians,
Chinese? When in the critical early phases of the civil war it
was foreign and especially Latvian bayonets that turned the
scales and kept the Bolsheviks in power? (At the time this
was not a matter for shame or concealment.) Or later,
throughout the twenties, when the Russian tradition and all
trace of Russian history were systematically ferreted out in
all fields of culture, eliminated even from place-names, in a
way seen only under enemy occupation — was this self-

12. The epic novel about the Russian revolution and civil war, published by
Mikhail Sholokhov in 1928. Ever since publication there have been persis-
tent, but unproven, rumors that Sholokhov was not the true author. Early in
1974, Solzhenitsyn authorized the publication in Russian in Paris of an anon-
ymous work (“The Rapids of The Quiet Don*) purporting to prove that
the author was not Sholokhov but a White Cossack officer and prerevolu-
tionary writer named Fyodor Kryukov. — Trans.

13. See note on page 11. — Trans.

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destructive urge also a manifestation of the “Russian idea”?
Gorsky notes that in 1919 the borders of Soviet Russia
roughly corresponded with those of the Muscovite state —
ergo Bolshevism was supported mainly by Russians. But this
geographical feet could equally well be interpreted to mean
simply that it was mainly Russians who were forced to
shoulder the burden of Bolshevism. And can we think of any
people on earth in the twentieth century which when
trapped by the incoming tide of communism has pulled itself
together and stood firm? So fiu: there is not a single example
of this, except South Korea, where the United Nations came
to the rescue. South Vietnam might have been another case,
but has apparently been thrown off balance. And right now,
are we to say that communism in Cuba or in Vietnam “is an
organic outgrowth of Russian life”? Is “Marxism one of the
forms taken by the populist-messianic mentality” in France
too? Or in Latin America? Or in Tanzania? And does all this
come from the unwashed monk Filofei?

What a state of disrepair twentieth-century Russian history
is in, how grotesquely distorted and full of obscurities, if peo-
ple so self-confidendy ignorant of it can offer us their ser-
vices as judges. Because of our complacency we may live to
see the day when fifty or a hundred years of Russian history
will have sunk into oblivion, and nobody will be able to es-
tablish any reliable record of them — it will be too late.

The publication of these articles is not fortuitous — the
idea is perhaps to take advantage of our helplessness, turn
recent Russian history inside out, blame us Russians alone
not only for our own misfortunes but also for those of our
erstwhile tormentors and nowadays pretty well the whole
planet These accusations are typical of their authors,
plucked out of thin air and shamelessly fabricated, and it is
easy to foresee already how they intend to go on searing our
wounds with them.

This article has not been written to minimize the guilt of
the Russian people. Nor, however, to scrape all the guilt from
mother earth and load it onto ourselves. True, we were not
vaccinated against the plague. True, we lost our heads. True,

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we gave way, and then caved in altogether. All true. But we
have not been the first and only begetters in all this time
since the fifteenth century I

We are not the only ones, there are many others. Indeed,
almost everyone when the time comes gives way, gives up,
sometimes under less pressure than we succumbed to, and at
times even eagerly. (The brief period of our history from
February to October 1917 has turned out to be a compressed
resume of the later and present history of the West.)

Thus, at the very beginning of our repentance we have
been warned: the path ahead will bristle with such insults
and slanders. If you are the first to repent, earlier and more
fully than others, you must expect predators in the guise of
penitents to flock around and peck your liver.

Nonetheless, there is no way out, except that of re-
pentance.

FIVE

It may turn out that we are already incapable of following
the path of our dreams, reaching out and acknowledging our
mistakes, our sins, our crimes. In that case there is no moral
escape route from the pit into which we have fallen. And
every other way out is illusory, no more than a short-lived
social delusion.

But if it turns out that we are still not utterly lost and can
find in ourselves the strength to pass through this burning
zone of general national repentance, of internal repentance,
for the harm which we have done here in our own country, to
ourselves, will it be possible for Russia to stop at that? No,
we shall have to find in ourselves the resolve to take the next
step: to acknowledge our external sins, those against other
peoples.

There are plenty of them. To clear the international air and
convince others of our sincere goodwill, we must not conceal
these sins, not tuck them away nor slur over them in our
remembrance. My view is that if we err in our repentance, it

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should be on the side of exaggeration, giving others the ben-
efit of the doubt. We should accept in advance that there is
no neighbor toward whom we bear no guilt. Let us behave as
people do on the day of forgiveness, and ask forgiveness of
all around us.

The scope of our repentance must be infinite. We cannot
run away even from ancient sins; we may write off other peo-
ple’s sins as ancient history, but we have no right to do it for
ourselves. A few pages further on I shall be talking about the
future of Siberia — and whenever I do so my heart sinks at
the thought of our age-old sin in oppressing and destroying
the indigenous peoples. And is this really ancient history? If
Siberia today were densely populated by the original na-
tional groups the only step we could ethically take would be
to cede their land to them and not stand in the way of their
freedom. But since there is only a faint sprinkling of them on
the Siberian continent, it is permissible for us to seek our fu-
ture there, so long as we show a tender fraternal concern for
the natives, help them in their daily lives, educate them, and
do not forcibly impose our ways on them.

A historical survey would be out of place in this article —
and besides, space does not permit it. It would contain
crimes enough — as for instance those we committed against
the mountain peoples of the Caucasus: the Russian military
encroachment in the nineteenth century (condemned at the
proper time by the great Russian writers) and the deporta-
tions of the twentieth century (which Caucasian writers
themselves dare not deal with).

Repentance is always difficult. And not only because we
must cross the threshold of self-love, but also because our
own sins are not so easily visible to us.

If we take the Russo-Polish theme — here too there is an
endless tangle of crimes. To unravel it would teach us much
about human relations in the broadest sense. (Today, when
both the Poles and we ourselves are crushed by brute force,
such a historical inquiry may seem inappropriate. But I write
for posterity. Someday it may seem appropriate.)

So much has been said about our guilt toward Poland that

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it has left a deposit on our memory, and we need no more
persuasion. The three Partitions. The suppression of the 1830
and 1863 risings. After that. Russification: Polish-speaking el-
ementary schools were completely forbidden, in high schools
even the Polish language was taught in Russian (as an obliga-
tory subject) and pupils were forbidden to speak Polish
among themselves in their living quarters! In the twentieth
century there was the stubborn struggle to deny Poland its
independence, and the crafty ambiguities of Russia’s leaders
in 1914-1916.

At the same time, how frequent were the expressions of
penitence from the Russian side, from Herzen 14 onward,
how unanimous was the sympathy of all educated Russian so-
ciety for the Poles, so much so that in the councils of the
Progressive Bloc, Polish independence was regarded as a
war aim no less important than Russian victory.

If the most recent happenings have inspired no such cry of
repentance in Russia, it is only because we are so crushed,
but we all remember, and there will yet be occasion to say it
out loud: the noble stab in the back for dying Poland on 17
September 1939; the destruction of the flower of the Polish
people in our camps, Katyn in particular; and our gloating,
heartless immobility on die bank of the Vistula in August
1944, whence we gazed through our binoculars at Hider
crushing the rising of the nationalist forces in Warsaw — no
need for them to get big ideas, we will find the right people
to put in the government (I was nearby, and I speak with
certainty: the impetus of our advance was such that the forc-
ing of the Vistula would have been no problem, and it would
have changed the fate of Warsaw.)

But just as some individuals more readily open their hearts
to repentance, and others are more resistant and offer not a
single chink, so, I think, with nations — some are more and
some less inclined to repent

14. Alexander Herzen (1812-1870), famous Russian political figure and
thinker and editor of the emigre journal the Bell, which he published from
London after his forced emigration from Russia in 1847 . — Trans.

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In previous centuries Poland in its prime, strong and self-
confident, was busy just as long and just as energetically an-
nexing our territory and oppressing us. (Galician Ruthenia
and Podolia in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries; then
Polesia, Volynia and the Ukraine were incorporated under
the Union of Lublin in 1569. In the sixteenth century came
Stefan Batory’s campaign against Russia, and the siege of
Pskov. At the end of the sixteenth century the Poles put
down the Cossack rising under Nalivaiko. At the beginning
of the seventeenth century — the wars of Zygmunt III, the
two false claimants to the Russian throne, the occupation of
Smolensk, the temporary occupation of Moscow, the cam-
paign of Wladyslaw IV. At that point the Poles almost de-
prived us of our national independence, and the danger for
us was no less serious than that of the Tartar invasion, since
the Poles were out to destroy the Orthodox faith. In their
own country they systematically oppressed the Orthodox,
and forced them into the Uniate church. In the mid-seven-
teenth century came the repression of Bogdan Khmelnitsky,
and even in the middle of the eighteenth the crushing of the
peasant rising at Uman.) Well then, has any wave of regret
rolled over educated Polish society, any wave of repentance
surged through Polish literature? Never. Even the Arians,
who were opposed to war in general, had nothing special to
say about the subjugation of the Ukraine and Byelorussia.
During our Time of Troubles, the eastward expansion of Po-
land was accepted by Polish society as a normal and even
praiseworthy policy. The Poles thought of themselves as
God’s chosen people, the bastion of Christianity, whose mis-
sion was to carry true Christianity to the “semipagan” Ortho-
dox of savage Muscovy, and to be the propagators of
Renaissance university culture. And when some people
openly voiced their second thoughts and regrets about this
when Poland went into decline in the second half of the
eighteenth century, they were of a political and never of an
ethical nature.

True, one cannot always draw the line between a general

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national characteristic and the imprint of a particular social
order. The Polish social order, with its weak elected kings,
its all-powerful magnates and the utterly undisciplined sel-
fishness of the gentry, led to the noisy self-assertion of na-
tionhood, which ruled out self-limitation and made
repentance seem inappropriate. In such a society educated
Poles felt themselves to be participants and authors of all that
was done, and not detached observers, whereas repentance
was made easier for Russians in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century by the fact that those who condemned of-
ficial policy could consider themselves uninvolved: it was all
their doing, the tsar did not consult society.

But perhaps Polish penitence expressed itself in deeds?
For more than a century Poland experienced the misery of
dismemberment, but then under the Versailles treaty gained
independence and a great deal of territory (once more at the
expense of the Ukraine and Byelorussia). Poland’s first action
in its relations with the outside world was to attack Soviet
Russia in 1920 — it attacked energetically, and took Kiev
with the object of breaking through to the Black Sea. We are
taught at school — to make it seem more awful — that this
was the “Third Campaign of the Entente” and that Poland
concerted its actions with the White generals in order to re-
store tsarism. This is rubbish. It was an independent act on
the part of Poland, which waited for the rout of all the main
White forces so as not to be their involuntary ally and so that
it could plunder and carve up Russia for itself while the latter
was most helplessly fragmented. This did not quite come off
(though Poland did extract an indemnity from the Soviets).
Then in 1921 came its second foreign-policy initiative: the
illegal detachment of Vilnius and the surrounding area from a
weak Lithuania. And neither the League of Nations, nor all
the admonitions and appeals to the Polish conscience, had
any effect: Poland still clung to the piece it had grabbed to
the very day of its collapse. Can anyone remember the nation
repenting in this connection? (Poland’s aggressive acts, in-
cidentally, were carried out by the socialist Pilsudski, one of

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Alexander Ulyanov’s 16 codefendants.) In the Ukrainian and
Byelorussian lands annexed under the treaty of 1921, a policy
of relentless Polonization was carried out, even Orthodox ser-
mons and Scripture lessons had a Polish accent. And in the
infamous year of 1937, Orthodox churches were demolished
(more than a hundred of them, including Warsaw Cathedral)
on the Polish side of the frontier too, and priests and parish-
ioners were arrested.

How can we possibly rise above all this, except by mutual
repentance?

And is it not true that the degree of our repentance, indi-
vidual or national, is very much influenced by an awareness
of guilt on the other side? If those whom we hurt have pre-
viously hurt us, our guilt feelings are not so hysterical, their
guilt modifies and mutes our own. The memory of the Tartar
yoke in Russia must always dull our possible sense of guilt
toward the remnants of the Golden Horde. Our guilt feelings
toward the Estonians and Lithuanians are always more pain-
ful and shameful than any we have toward the Latvians or
Hungarians, whose rifles barked often enough in the cellars
of the Cheka and the backyards of Russian villages. (I ignore
the inevitable noisy protests that these were “not the same
people,” that one cannot transfer the blame from one set of
people to another. We are not the same people either. But we
must all answer for everything.)

This is yet another argument in favor of general repen-
tance. What relief, what rapturous relief it gives us when our
enemies acknowledge their guilt toward us! How gratefully
eager we are to outstrip them in repentance, to surpass them
in magnanimity!

But repentance loses all sense if it goes no farther: if we
have a good cry and then go on as before. Repentance opens
up the path to a new relationship. Between nations as be-
tween individuals.

15. Alexander Ulyanov (1866-1887), Lenin’s elder brother, was executed
with four others in 1887 after an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Tsar
Alexander III. Pilsudski and one other defendant were pardoned. — Trans.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

The repentance of a nation, like any other kind, assumes
the possibility of forgiveness on the part of the injured. But it
is impossible to expect forgiveness before you yourself have
made up your mind to forgive. The path of mutual repen-
tance and mutual forgiveness is one and the same.

Who has no guilt? We are all guilty. But at some point the
endless account must be closed, we must stop discussing
whose crimes are more recent, more serious and affect most
victims. It is useless for even the closest neighbors to com-
pare the duration and gravity of their grievances against each
other. But feelings of penitence can be compared.

This picture does not seem to me an idyll, unreal and irrel-
evant to our modem situation. On the contrary. Just as it is
impossible to build a good society when relations between
people are bad, there will never be a good world while na-
tions are on bad terms and secretly cherish the desire for
revenge. Neither a “positive” foreign policy nor yet the most
skillful efforts on the part of diplomats to draw up tactfully
incomplete treaties so that each side can find some balm for
its national pride — none of this can smother the seeds of dis-
cord and prevent even more conflicts from arising.

At present the whole atmosphere of the United Nations is
saturated with hatred and spite — remember how the Assem-
bly went wild with joy (some uninhibited members are said
to have jumped up on the benches) when ten million Chi-
nese on Taiwan were thrown out of the human family for
refusing to submit to totalitarian aggression.

Without the establishment of radically new, really good
relations between nations the entire quest for ‘ world peace
is either utopian or a precarious balancing act.

The stock of mutual guilt mounts especially high in multi-
national states and federations, like Austria-Hungary in the
past, or the USSR, Yugoslavia, Nigeria and other African
states with a multiplicity of tribes and races today. If such
states are to achieve internal stability and be held together
by something other than coercion, the peoples who live in
them cannot possibly manage without a highly developed ca-

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

pacity for repentance. Otherwise the fires will smolder for-
ever beneath the ashes and flare up again and again, and
these countries will never know stability. The West Pakis-
tanis were ruthless toward those of the East — and the
country collapsed, but still the hatred did not die down. On
the contrary, northern Nigeria, with the help of British and
Soviet arms and with the whole world indifferently looking
on, took a cruel revenge on the eastern regions and preserved
the unity of the country, but unless this wrong is righted by
repentance and kindness on the part of the victors, that
country will not enjoy stability and health.

Repentance is only a clearing of the ground, the establish-
ment of a clean basis in preparation for further moral ac-
tions — what in the life of the individual is called “reform.”
And if in private life what has been done must be put right
by deeds, not words, this is all the more true in the life of a
nation. Its repentance must be expressed not so much in ar-
ticles, books and broadcasts as in national actions.

With regard to all the peoples in and beyond our borders
forcibly drawn into our orbit, we can fully purge our guilt by
giving them genuine freedom to decide their future for them-
selves.

After repentance, and once we renounce the use of force,
self-limitation comes into its own as the most natural princi-
ple to live by. Repentance creates the atmosphere for self-
limitation.

Self-limitation on the part of individuals has often been ob-
served and described, and is well known to us all. (Quite
apart from the pleasure it gives to those around us in our ev-
eryday lives, it can be universally helpful to men in all areas
of their activity.) But so for as I know, no state has ever car-
ried through a deliberate policy of self-limitation or set itself
such a task in a general form — though when it has done so at
difficult moments in some particular sector (food rationing,
fuel rationing, and so on) self-limitation has paid off hand-
somely.

Every trade union and every corporation strives by all pos-

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

sible means to win the most advantageous position in the
economy, every firm aims at uninterrupted expansion, every
party wants to run its country, medium-sized states want to
become great ones, and great ones to rule the world.

We are always very ready to limit others — this is what all
politicians are engaged in — but nowadays the man who
suggests that a state or party, without coercion and simply in
answer to a moral call, should limit itself, invites ridicule.
We are always anxiously on the lookout for ways of curbing
the inordinate greed of the other man, but no one is heard
renouncing his own inordinate greed. History knows of sev-
eral occasions on which the greed of a minority was curbed,
with much bloodshed, but who is to curb the inflamed greed
of the majority, and how? That is something it can only do
for itself.

The idea of self-limitation in society is not a new one. We
find it a century ago in such thoroughgoing Christians as the
Russian Old Believers. In the journal Istina (No. 1,1807), i n
an article by K. Golubov, who corresponded with Ogarev 16
and Herzen, we read:

“A people subjects itself to great suffering by its immoral
acquisitiveness. That which is obtained by revolt and seques-
tration can have no true value. These are rather the fruits of
the overweening behavior of a corrupt conscience: the true
and lasting good is that which is attained by farsighted self-
limitation" (emphasis added).

And elsewhere: “Save through self-restriction, there is no
other true freedom for mankind/'

After the Western ideal of unlimited freedom, after the
Marxist concept of freedom as acceptance of the yoke of ne-
cessity — here is the true Christian definition of freedom.
Freedom is self-restriction I Restriction of the self for the
sake of others!

Once understood and adopted, this principle diverts
us — as individuals, in all forms of human association, socie-

16. Nikolai Ogarev (1813-1877), poet and friend of Herzen, who lived
abroad for much of his life. He attempted to form a nationwide revolutionary
organization out of a series of populist groups calling themselves “Land and
Liberty.” — Trans.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

ties and nations — from outward to inward development,
thereby giving us greater spiritual depth.

The turn toward inward development, the triumph of in-
wardness over outwardness, if it ever happens, will be a
great turning point in the history of mankind, comparable to
the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
There will be a complete change not only in the direction of
our interests and activities but in the very nature of human
beings (a change from spiritual dispersal to spiritual concen-
tration), and a greater change still in the character of human
societies. If in some places this is destined to be a revolu-
tionary process, these revolutions will not be like earlier
ones — physical, bloody and never beneficial — but will be
moral revolutions, requiring both courage and sacrifice,
though not cruelty — a new phenomenon in human history,
of which little is yet known and which as yet no one has
prophetically described in clear and precise forms. The ex-
amination of all this does not lie within the scope of our
present article.

But in the material sphere too this change will have con-
spicuous results. The individual will not flog himself to death
in his greed for bigger and bigger earnings, but will spend
what he has economically, rationally and calmly. The state
will not, as it does now, use its strength — sometimes even
with no particular end in view — simply on the principle that
where something will give, one must exert pressure, if a bar-
rier can be moved, move it — no, among states too the moral
rule for individuals will be adopted — do not unto others as
you would not have done unto you: instead, leam to use to
the full what you have. Only thus can a well-ordered life be
created on our planet.

The concept of unlimited freedom is closely connected in
its origin with the concept of infinite progress, which we now
recognize as false. Progress in this sense is impossible on our
earth with its limited surface area and resources. We shall in
any case inevitably have to stop jostling each other and show
self-restraint: with the population rapidly soaring, mother
earth herself will shortly force us to do so. It would be spiri-

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

tually so much more valuable, and psychologically so much
easier, to adopt the principle of self-limitation — and to
achieve it through prudent self-restriction.

Such a change will not be easy for the free economy of the
West. It is a revolutionary demolition and total reconstruction
of all our ideas and aims. We must go over from uninter-
rupted progress to a stable economy, with nil growth in terri-
tory, parameters and tempo, developing only through
improved technology (and even technical successes must be
critically screened). This means that we must abjure the
plague of expansion beyond our borders, the continual
scramble after new markets and sources of raw material, in-
creases in our industrial territory or the volume of produc-
tion, the whole insane pursuit of wealth, fame and change.
No incentive to self-limitation has ever existed in bourgeois
economics, yet the formula would so easily and so long ago
have been derived from moral considerations. The fun-
damental concepts of private property and private economic
initiative are part of man’s nature, and necessary for his per-
sonal freedom and his sense of normal well-being. They
would be beneficial to society if only ... if only the carriers
of these ideas on the very threshold of development had lim-
ited themselves, and not allowed the size of their property
and thrust of their avarice to become a social evil, which
provoked so much justifiable anger, not tried to purchase
power and subjugate the press. It was as a reply to the
shamelessness of unlimited money-grubbing that socialism
in all its forms developed.

But a Russian author today need not rack his brains for an
answer to these worries. Self-limitation has countless
aspects — international, political, cultural, national, social,
party-political. We Russians should sort out those which con-
cern us.

And show an example of spiritual breadth. Show that re-
pentance is not fruitless.

It is in this hope and faith that I am writing this article.

Our native land, after centuries of misapplying its might
(both in the Petersburg and the neo-Muscovite periods), after

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

making so many useless acquisitions abroad and causing so
much destruction at home, now, before the chance is lost for-
ever, is perhaps more than any other country in need of com-
prehensive inward development — both spiritual, and the
ensuing geographical, economic and social development that
will occur as a consequence.

Our foreign policy in recent decades might have been de-
liberately devised in defiance of the true interests of our peo-
ple. We have taken on ourselves a responsibility for the fate
of Eastern Europe incommensurable with our present level
of spiritual development and our ability to understand Euro-
pean needs and ways. We are ready in our conceit to extend
our responsibility to any other country, however distant,
even on the other side of the globe, provided it declares its
intent to nationalize the means of production and centralize
power. (These, according to our Theory, are the primary fea-
tures, and all the rest — national peculiarities, way of life,
thousand-year-old cultural traditions — are secondary. We
meddle indefatigably in conflicts on every continent, lay
down the law, shove people into quarrels, shamelessly push
arms till they have become our most important item of ex-
port. We are what Soviet newspapers until the forties called
traders in blood/’) 17 In pursuit of all these artificial aims,
which are of no use to our nation, we have exhausted our
strength and wrecked several of our generations — mainly
physically in the past, but now mainly spiritually.

All these world tasks, which have been of no use at all to
us, have left us tired . We need to get away from the hurly-
burly of world rivalries. And from the exhibition istic space
race, which is useless to us: what is the point of our painful
efforts to erect villages on the moon when our Russian vil-
lages have become dilapidated and unfit for habitation? In
our insane industrial drive we have drawn inordinate masses
of people into unnatural towns and absurd, hastily erected
buildings, where they are poisoned, collapse under nervous

17. According to Western specialists our arms sales between 1955 and 1970
came to the value of twenty-eight billion dollars. In the seventies our share
of the world arms trade has been 37.5 percent.

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strain, and start degenerating in early youth. Sweated female
labor instead of sex equality, the neglect of parental duty,
drunkenness, loss of appetite for work, the decline of the
school, the decadence of our native language — whole spiri-
tual deserts are eating into our life and laying waste to great
patches of it, and it is only in overcoming these that we can
win for ourselves true and not bogus prestige. Should we be
struggling for warm seas far away, or ensuring that warmth
rather than enmity flows between our own citizens?

And as if this were not enough, we who boast so much
about our lead over others have slavishly copied Western
technical progress and unthinkingly become jammed in a
blind alley, finding ourselves together with the West in a
crisis which threatens the existence of all mankind.

A family which has suffered a great misfortune or disgrace
tries to withdraw into itself for a time to get over its grief by
itself. This is what the Russian people must do: spend most
of its time alone with itself without neighbors and guests. It
must concentrate on its inner tasks: on healing its soul, edu-
cating its children, putting its own house in order.

The healing of our souls 1 Nothing now is more important to
us after all that we have lived through, after our long com-
plicity in lies and even crimes. It may be too late for the
older generations, but this only means that we must work
with even greater zeal and selflessness to bring up our chil-
dren, so that when they grow up they will be incomparably
purer than our fallen society. The school — that is the key to
the future of Russial But it is a complicated and contradictory
problem: bad parents and teachers must rear better people to
follow them. It cannot be solved in one generation. It will
require immense efforts. The whole public educational sys-
tem must be created anew, and not with rejects but with the
people’s best forces. It will cost billions — and we should
take them from our vainglorious and unnecessary foreign ex-
penditure. We must stop running out into the street to join
every brawl and instead retire virtuously into our own home
so long as we are in such a state of disorder and confusion.

Fortunately we have such a home, a spacious and un-

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

sullied home preserved for us by history — the Russian
Northeast. Let us give up trying to restore order overseas,
keep our grabbing imperial hands off neighbors who want to
live their own lives in freedom — and turn our national and
political zeal toward the untamed expanses of the Northeast,
whose emptiness is becoming intolerable to our neighbors
now that life on earth is so tight packed.

The Northeast means the north of European Russia —
Pinega, Mezen, Pechora — it means too the Lena and the
whole central zone of Siberia north of the railway line, which
is to this day deserted, in places virgin territory and un-
known — there are hardly any open spaces like it left on the
civilized earth. And then too the tundra and permafrost of the
Lower Ob, Yamal, Taimyr, Khatango, Indigirka, Kolyma,
Chukotka and Kamchatka cannot be abandoned in despair,
given the technological skills — and the population prob-
lems — of the twenty-first century.

The Northeast is the wind in our faces described by Volo-
shin: 18 “In that wind is the whole destiny of Russia.” The
Northeast is the outward vector, which has long indicated the
direction of Russia’s natural movement and development. It
was appreciated by Novgorod, but neglected by Muscovite
Russia, partly opened up by a spontaneous movement that
took place without state encouragement, then by the forced
flight of the Old Believers. Peter the Great failed to see its
significance, and in the last half century it has in effect been
overlooked, despite all the sensational plans.

The Northeast is a reminder that Russia is the northeast of
the planet, that our ocean is the Arctic, not the Indian Ocean,
that we are not the Mediterranean nor Africa and that we
have no business there 1 These boundless expanses, sense-
lessly left stagnant and icily barren for four centuries, await
our hands, our sacrifices, our zeal and our love. But it may be
that we have only two or three decades left for this work:
otherwise the imminent world population explosion will take
these expanses away from us.

18. Maximilian Voloshin (1878-1932), post-Symbolist poet and artist noted
for his nightmarish visions of the revolution and the civil war.— Trans.

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REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

The Northeast is also the key to many apparently intricate
Russian problems. Instead of casting greedy eyes on lands
which do not really belong to us, or in which we are not in
the majority, we should be directing our forces and urging
our young people toward the Northeast — that is the far-
sighted solution. Its great expanses offer us a way out of the
worldwide technological crisis. They offer us plenty of room
in which to correct all our idiocies in building towns, indus-
trial enterprises, power stations and roads. Its cold and in
places permanently frozen soil is still not ready for cultiva-
tion, it will require enormous inputs of energy — but the
energy lies hidden in the depths of the Northeast itself since
we have not yet had time to squander it.

The Northeast could not be brought to life by camp watch-
towers, the yells of armed guards and the barking of man-eat-
ing dogs. Only free people with a free understanding of our
national mission can resurrect these great spaces, awaken
them, heal them, beautify them with feats of engineering.

The Northeast — more than just a musical sound and more
than just a geographical concept — will signify that Russia
has resolutely opted for self -limitation, for turning inward
rather than outward. In its whole future life — national, so-
cial, personal, in the schools and in the family — it will con-
centrate its efforts on inward, not outward, growth.

This does not mean that we shall shut ourselves up within
ourselves forever. This would not be in accordance with the
outgoing Russian character. When we have recovered our
health and put our house in order we shall undoubtedly want
to help poor and backward peoples, and succeed in doing so.
But not out of political self-interest, not to make them live as
we do or serve us.

Some may wonder how far a nation, society or state can go
in self-limitation. Unlike the individual, a whole people can-
not afford the luxury of impulsive and totally self-sacrificing
decisions. If a people has gone over to self-limitation, but its
neighbors have not, must it be ready to resist aggression?

Yes, of course. Defense forces must be retained, but only
for genuinely defensive purposes, only on a scale adequate to

REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION

real and not imaginary threats, not as an end in themselves,
not as a self-perpetuating tradition, not to maintain the size
and glamour of the high command. They will be retained in
the hope that the whole atmosphere of mankind will soon
begin to change.

And if it does not change, the Club of Rome has done the
arithmetic: we have less than a hundred years to live.

November 1973

M3

The Direction of Change

A.B.

At the beginning of this century, to the bewilderment (and
annoyance) of many who thought themselves sufficiently in
tune with the “spirit of the age,” there appeared in Russian
society a broad movement toward philosophic idealism. A
certain Kiev professor observed at the time that this interest
in idealism and the amount of attention devoted to it demon-
strated individual faith in the writers who preached it, rather
than any genuine readiness on the part of society as a whole
to abandon philosophic positivism and the various forms of
philosophic materialism that had taken root in our country.
One gets the impression, he said, that society is now faced
with an urgent question — where does truth lie, in idealism
or positivism? But society is not yet ready to provide an an-
swer: “The ground on which the seed of idealism might
bring forth abundantly has yet to be plowed. Positivism ex-
ploits this situation so as to maintain its dominance.”

These words, spoken seventy years ago, have turned out to
be prophetic. Positivism, unscrupulous as to means, has held
on to power for nearly a century. But today Russian society
feces the same question once more. Once more an answer is
urgently demanded, while society seems all the less pre-
pared for it, all the more caught unawares. “Truly one has to

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THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE

admit that our society is in a lamentable state. This absence
of public opinion, this indifference to duty, justice and truth,
this cynical contempt for human thought and dignity can lead
only to despair/' Pushkin's words, but they could have been
uttered today. And on the face of it one is left repeating those
words about “unplowed ground."

But history moves in a mysterious way and lends itself
little to logical analysis. The path of reason and cognition,
based on the gradual exercise of thought and the accumula-
tion of judgments logically arrived at, is not the only one pos-
sible either for society or for the individual, and it is not the
most important. There is also the path of lived spiritual expe-
rience, the path of integral intuitive perception.

Has our own history of the past seventy years not taught us
something? It has been a harsh and terrible period. Many
times it has seemed that “Russia was dead," that “the old
Russia no longer existed," that the preference of facelessness
to individuality had caused the whole nation to lose itself.
But was this really so? Did not a handful of Russian poets
and writers survive those years? And surely the killings and
tortures we experienced did not shape only nonentities? We
had our martyrs and heroes. And even when they went un-
heard and unrecognized they were preparing the way for the
rebirth of society to some sort of a new life.

Early as it is to draw definite conclusions, I believe an an-
swer of sorts to the question “Where is the truth?" is already
emerging. Just as the body rejects a foreign implant, there is
now in progress a rejection of “positive philosophy" and all
its accompanying official ideology: our society is covering it
with a scab of skepticism, so that this graft is no longer at-
tached to the living soul, as it was seventy or a hundred years
ago, but is rejected by it.

But that is not enough. We need new spiritual energies, a
source of positive influence. Let us dare to express the cau-
tious hope that such an influence for good already exists in
our society. Mysteriously and unsuspected by the busy multi-
tude, Christian consciousness, once almost defunct, is steal-
ing back. In the last few years Christianity's word has

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THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE

suddenly and miraculously evoked a response in the hearts
of many whose whole education, way of life and fashionable
ideas about "alienation” and the historical pessimism of con-
temporary art would seem to have cut them off from it irrevo-
cably. It is as if a door had opened while nobody was
looking.

Why is this rebirth taking place in our country, where
Christianity is attacked particularly systematically and with
great brutality, while the rest of the world suffers a general
decline in faith and religious feeling? Once again our history
over the last fifty years provides a clue to one of the reasons.
We have passed through such bottomless pits, we have been
so exposed to all the winds of Kolyma , 1 we have experienced
such utter exhaustion of human resources that we have
learned to see the “one essential” that cannot be taken away
from man, and we have learned not to look to human re-
sources for succor. In glorious destitution, in utter defense-
lessness in the face of suffering, our hearts have been
kindled by an inner spiritual warmth and have opened to
new, unexpected impulses.

Now, when the walls of our houses have become a little
warmer and less collapsible, we are haunted by an obscure
but insistent foreboding of impending historical change. It
manifests itself in the general feeling that “things cannot go
on like this” and as yet has assumed no fixed shape. But the
shape of our future development is, of course, the more im-
portant question of our time. It will form itself somehow, but
everything depends on how precisely.

Two factors I have mentioned — the return of Christian
consciousness and the presentiment of change — mark the
special responsibilities of our time. .

It is hard not to link the two. In fact, backsliding and de-
nials notwithstanding, we live in a Christian culture in a
Christian age, and it is Christianity that is the fermenting
agent, the “yeast of the world,” causing history to rise like
dough in a trough, not only in the past but in the future as

i. Kolyma: a river and a region in northeast Siberia noted for its harsh cli-
mate. Some of the worst labor camps were situated in this region.— Tbans.

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THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE

well. We are profoundly convinced that Christianity alone
possesses enough motive force gradually to inspire and trans-
form our world. Therefore the only question that remains is
how profoundly we succeed in unders tandin g this fact and
embodying it in our lives in our time.

Acknowledging this, we must consider what we should do
and what we should strive for. Christianity is more than a
system of views, it is a way of life. Much has been well writ-
ten about this and well lived, beginning with the apostles
and ending with our own contemporaries. It would be wrong
now to snatch something hastily from this vast and priceless
living experience just to drape over the feebleness of our
deeds and thoughts.

The briefest inspection of our pitiful arsenal will be suf-
ficient to convince us that it is quite unequal to the tasks
before us.

When we think of the necessity for change, our thoughts
follow the beaten path to “decentralization of die system” or
‘ the struggle for social reconstruction.” The most dynamic
and resolute forces in our society are already hankering for
such a struggle, not to mention those who are always glad to
escape inner emptiness through outward activity. But as we
already know, the fallacy of all revolutions is that they are
strong and concrete on the negative and destructive side, and
limp and abstract on the positive and creative side. This is
how Dostoyevsky defined the underlying cause: “The bee
knows the formula of its hive and the ant the formula of its
anthills, but man does not know his formula.” The reason
why man does not know his formula is that, unlike the bee
and the ant, which are not free, man is free. Freedom is
man’s formula, but he will never find it so long as he seeks it
in parties and ideologies, however good they may be in
themselves.

This freedom is not man’s “natural” inheritance, but rather
the aim of his life and a “supernatural” gift. “Servitude to
sin” is how Christianity defines the normal condition of
man’s soul and it summons man to free himself from this ser-
vitude.

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THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE

The path of heroic spiritual striving is the only path that
can lead man — and the whole of society — to freedom. The
authors of the Vekhi ( Landmarks ) 2 anthology wrote of these
things seventy years ago (S. Bulgakov and S. Frank in partic-
ular), but few understood them at the time.

So is it not time, after almost two hundred years of obses-
sion with the "‘social idea,” to turn to this path, clearing our
minds of the ideal of the fighter and replacing it with the
ideal of the visionary. What a word — the modem tongue can
scarcely pronounce it, so accustomed are we in our arrogance
to reject this ideal from the lofty heights of our struggle for
the “common cause”! The nearest words our vocabulary can
find for this goal are now “self-improvement” and the theory
of “small causes.” What a blunder! What a stubborn refusal to
come to our senses!

The point is not that we should cease to strive for a better
social order, but that the truth about this order is one of those
truths that cannot be grasped by reason, but can only be
learned by living and acting, and are accessible only to a con-
sciousness that is already enlightened. And until we bring
about a change in ourselves, even the best-intentioned at-
tempts to restructure anything “from outside” by decree or
by force are doomed at best to come to naught, as in Repeti-
lov’s 8 “We are making a commotion, my friend,” and at
worst to end in Dostoyevsky’s Possessed , with all the logical
consequences that we know so well.

The age we are now living in is a vital one for our nation.
Historical action has time limits, and if the chance is missed
it will be a very long time before it presents itself again. One
may well ask: “How is it that ye do not discern this time?”
(Luke 12:56). Will we have the perception and determination
to reform our nature from inside and through this our com-
mon life?

Suffering and sorrow ennoble the individual and society
alike, so long as they are correctly understood and accepted.

2. See Introduction, pages v-vi. — Trans.

3. Repetilov: A garrulous would-be revolutionary in Woe from Wit, a play in
verse written by Alexander Griboyedov (1795-1829). — Trans.

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THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE

But if (like many others, for any number of reasons) we are
unwilling to recognize the responsibility we bear for this
present page of our history, if we attempt simply to forget
these sufferings and to live as if nothing had happened, eras-
ing them from our history, as it were, then we are doomed.
Then we shall again be obliged to continue between two par-
allel processes: the eradication of the smallest stirrings of the
living soul and thought from above, and the swelling of im-
potent hatred and rage from below. In this way good will be
repelled on both fronts, until “history repeats itself” and
punishes us for our obduracy.

We must conserve and assimilate the vast spiritual strength
for which we in our country have paid so dearly. We must
transform it into an inward fortress of resistance to lies and
violence, to the point of laying down our lives if necessary.
And this transformation must take place within our souls.

It will be very difficult. Now especially, when the path of
spiritual striving is in direct conflict with every contemporary
aspiration of mankind; when “rising material demands”
(egged on by every kind of advertising) and the capacity to
fulfill those demands are regarded to all intents and purposes
as the main criterion of the level of a society’s development;
when incessant interference — by television, cinema, sport
and newspapers — drowns the inner voice. Now the accessi-
bility of travel and entertainment acts as a constant distrac-
tion from our inner affairs. The world has never seemed so
noisy. Never has the entertainment industry, the industry of
the spiritual pabulum of “mass information,” so completely
dominated mankind. This is why men feel such terrible spiri-
tual chaos inside them, this is why they have lost touch with
reality, this is why truth has become so dangerously relative.
Genuine reality and genuine activity have been hunted
down and cast out. Waves of aimless external irritation toss
us hither and thither on the surface of the sea of life.

Christianity teaches the concept of “abstinence” — the
cleansing of the soul, spiritual repose, the aspiration toward
inner simplicity and harmony. We should begin with this, for
only to the abstinent spirit is truth revealed, and only truth

M9

THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE

liberates. There is no need to begin with external solutions.
We must achieve the sort of spiritual condition that enables
solutions to be dictated from within by the immutable laws of
compassion and love. Mysterious inner freedom, once
achieved, will give us a sense of community with everybody
and responsibility for all. So long as we achieve it in fact, not
merely in wishful thinking, everything else will come of its
own accord.

Without it, on the other hand, any social order will be no
more than “iron and clay mixed by human hands.”

But we are confused. In the search for a solution our eyes
habitually turn toward the West. There they have “progress”
and “democracy.” But in the West the most sensitive people
are trying, with similar alarm and hope, to learn something
from us. They assume, probably not unreasonably, that our
harsh and oppressed life has taught us something that might
be able to counteract the artificiality and soullessness of their
own world — something that they have lost in all their
worldly bustle.

So perhaps if we can assimilate our experience and some-
how put it to use, it may serve to complement Europe’s expe-
rience. Then Russia will escape Chaadayev’s 4 bitter
prophecy of being nothing but a yawning void, an object les-
son to other nations.

Nestor the chronicler 5 compared our people to the “elev-
enth horn laborers.” If instead of standing around in the mar-
ketplace we answer the call of the Vineyard Owner, we shall
not be too late at the end of the day to receive the same wage
as the rest

4. P. Y. Chaadayev (1793-1856), a pro-Catholic political thinker whose
Philosophical Letters circulated clandestinely in early-nineteenth-century
Russia. After one of them was published in 1836, Tsar Nicholas I placed
Chaadayev under permanent house arrest and ordered medical supervision
of his mental health.

5. Nestor was a Kievan monk who compiled the best known of all the Rus-
sian medieval chronicles, “The Primary Chronicle,” in the eleventh century.

150

Russian Destinies

F. KORSAKOV

To the memory of Father Pavel Florensky

Father Pavel Florensky, who was murdered in one of the
labor camps of northern Russia, so that to this day the
whereabouts of his grave is unknown to the world, wrote
these words sixty years ago, in his book The Pillar and
Ground of the Truth: “As the end of History draws nearer,
the domes of the Holy Church begin to reflect the new, al-
most imperceptible, rosy light of the approaching Undying
Day.” Father Pavel is obviously not speaking here merely in
metaphors and images; his words are the testimony of a Rus-
sian genius to the reality and truth perceived by him and em-
bodied in his published works, and show an intensity of
thought in the search for Christ which is amazing even for
the Russian cultural tradition.

But then, does the passing of sixty years mean anything at
all in the context of such meditations on the nature of time?
And are we able to say that the Undying Day has come
nearer to us, in that what Russia has experienced in this cen-
tury has given us a truer ability than before to sense the
approach of that day, and to see more clearly the full extent
of our sin in its impending fire? What significance can sixty
years have, when to God a thousand years are as one day? Or
have the hardships endured by the Russian people altered

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

the true value of time, since the people’s soul cries out for an
end to its sufferings?

We should, of course, recognize the temptation inherent in
such thoughts — the temptation to exaggerate our own trou-
bles, to ignore the last two thousand years of human history,
to forget that “the Lord chastises those whom he loves’’
(Heb. 12:6). But if you have not yet realized this, what are
you to do when it is considered normal to pour abuse on all
that is holy, and the savagery and corruption permeating our
society are thought merely matters for political and philo-
sophical speculation? What are you to do when you and your
people seem to have come to the limit of human endurance,
when you find yourself feeing a blank wall that looms in front
of you and stops all light from reaching you, when your
knocking cannot be heard, when your cries are stifled as if by
cotton wool, when you are already prepared to end it all, to
die, even though you realize quite clearly the senselessness
of self-immolation?

But one day, in the midst of your utter confusion and de-
spair, you are suddenly brought up short by the light of an
inner peace seen on the face of a chance acquaintance. A
long time passes before you understand the providential
meaning of this encounter, when you see passing before your
mind’s eye the same kind of feces one by one — feces which
have accompanied every step of your life from its very
beginning, and you relive each one of those encounters. You
remember the girl soldier who shared a small piece of bread
and a mug of soup with you when you were a hungry little
boy, you remember the old man in a railway carriage, cross-
ing himself as a church flashed by outside the icy carriage
window, the old woman in black who held out her chapped,
grimy palm to you. You remember also the books you always
loved, not knowing why you loved them — books that
breathed eternal peace, rending your soul with the sufferings
of those who sought God, wrestled with God and lived in His
presence. Then you visualize scenes from the history of the
land where you were bom and bred, and where you will be
buried. And everything that formerly seemed nothing but a

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

senseless accumulation of facts and events, the manifestation
of an evil power, a fatal combination of circumstances or
merely proof of the ambition, cruelty and pettiness of those
in power, the stupidity and savagery of the men who for
some incomprehensible reason existed around you — all this
is unexpectedly illumined by the lofty concept of Destiny.
You now understand His purpose in all things — in the flying
snow that for half a year covers woods and pastures, cities
and rivers, in the golden magnificence of autumn, in the won-
derful skies of Russia — pale, cold, appeased. You re-create
all this later, much later, bit by bit, drawing it from the inner-
most recesses of your soul, but this “new life,” this unending
work, begins at that moment when you submit, for the first
time, to the involuntary promptings of your troubled soul and
step across the threshold of a church, still glancing timidly at
the others kneeling there, who have not entered merely on a
passing impulse.

What have you brought with you into this church? What
have you left outside its portals? Can you, having confessed
and partaken of the Holy Sacraments, renounce everything
that formerly filled your life — its problems, its pleasures and
disappointments, its varied experiences, your own already
formed and cherished ideas of good and evil, the weariness
of spirit bom of the world’s cares? These are some of the
most complex questions of our time. Today, when the ice
covering the entire length and breadth of the huge landmass
called Russia is in the process of breaking up, a process that
has been going on underground, unnoticed for many long
years, at a time when mere fashionable interest and curiosity
about religion have been swept away by a genuine and avid
demand for the Word of God, when priests are run off their
feet trying to satisfy the spiritual needs of their flock and still
fall short of the demand — today all the complicated and dif-
ficult, traditional and at the same time sharply topical, ac-
cursed Russian questions mingle and fester in this larger
question.

The efficacy of the sacrament of confession necessarily
requires the destruction of the strong attraction which the sin

153

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

you have overcome still has for you, the effacement and scour-
ing out of that sin from the penitent soul. Everything that is
of the self, that “is not of my Heavenly Father s planting”
(Matt. 15:13) must be rooted out, tom up and abandoned for-
ever, for it is in any case subject to the threat of eternal
annihilation and the agony of a second death.

Can we really imagine that this process of the soul cleans-
ing itself of festering sin by purging itself with fire while still
here in this life occurs as a single, rounded-off act of baptism
or return to the Church? Does the egoistic self having
lodged securely in your soul, really depart so easily?

The genuflecting Church floats in flickering candlelight,
which lights up the meek feces of those “fools in Christ”
with whom you have lived side by side your whole life but
whom you have never noticed; the words of the prayers,
which you do iiot know, slip past you without entering your
heart, and in your soul, still so full of impurity and self-love,
a suppressed rebellion begins to stir.

But why, when you have resolved on such an incredible
act of heroism, destroying your whole former life, surmount-
ing the disgusted incredulity of your former friends and
workmates, when you have renounced (as you imagine) the
world and its temptations and entered the Church with (as
you think) your soul bared — why are you not received with
joy and gratitude, like the prodigal son, why is there no fotted
calf, why is there no welcome for such courage on your part,
why does no one talk to you in a language you can under-
stand, why do they take no notice of your readiness to sacri-
fice yourself, nor have any respect for your learned theories
combining the latest achievements of the natural sciences
with modem philosophical ideas, nor your irony or artistic
taste? Why does the Church seem to see no difference be-
tween you who have come so tragically to help and “save”
the Church, and some old woman merely “seeking salvation”
for herself through the Church in her dull, traditional way?
Perhaps it is hue, after all, that the Church fears those in
power, that she bows to the earthly authorities and shows her
gratitude to the atheist Moloch for not interfering with her

154

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

and sparing her for the time being by pretending not to see
that, in essence, she has nothing to offer twentieth-century
man, that she is indifferent to the real suffering of our time,
that she loves abstractions and provides little more than con-
solation and escape from the world, that all she insists on is
the formal loyalty of her parishioners. Anyway, who are all
these priests, archpriests and metropolitans — what are their
real relations with the regime? Surely the government, which
persecutes liberal thought, has some reason for closing its
eyes to the existence of this undoubtedly archaic and alien
institution?

The last thing I want to do is analyze the phenomenon of
the “consciousness of the intelligentsia” — even in its novel
situation as today’s novitiate. The journal Vekhi 1 exhausted
the subject of the decay of the intelligentsia; and the sub-
sequent fate of the intelligentsia, unwilling to heed the warn-
ings and prophecies of Vekhi, evolved exactly as the latter
had predicted. The disease had already been diagnosed and
the antidote indicated. So let the dead bury their dead. . . .

Nevertheless, this problem has not been solved, it still
exists and you can’t get away from it Our vast country lies
silent but voices speak in its name. Some are purified and
matured by sorrow and suffering, but other voices can be
heard in whose modem, humanistic phraseology the inexpe-
rienced may not immediately recognize the same old devil
with his horns and hooves, the same old Peter Verkho-
vensky , 2 with his old collection of nostrums, insolence and
thoughtless ignorance.

Our land longs for the Word; its churches have been de-
stroyed and desecrated, but Bibles and Gospels are still as
much in demand on the black market as the works of modem
poets. However, this happens only in Moscow and in the
large towns; in the provinces, believers are reduced to blot-
ting out the antireligious patter in atheist pamphlets, leaving
only the quotations from the Scriptures intact. I cannot forget

1. See Introduction, pages v-vi. — Trans.

2. One of the principal characters in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Possessed.
—Trans.

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

the old man I saw on the steps of a Moscow church. “Chris-
tian people,” he was saying, “I’m from Kursk — everything
we had there has been burned. Couldn’t anyone give me just
one small book about God — please, in the name of Christ!”
But we have no interest in such places as Kursk and
Mtsensk. After half a century of punishment for being carried
away by our own personal experiences, we still continue to
suffer only on our own behalf, imagining our problems to be
the only ones worthy of attention and sympathy. All that stirs
us is our unquenchable thirst for instant justice, we continue
to nurse our own heroism, knowing nothing of true suffer-
the source of that peace and light endlessly irradiating
the Russian Orthodox Church. We are always beginning from
a tabula rasa, always inventing new toys, but our indifference
and lack of respect for the riches we already possess is not a
sign of our broad-mindedness, but of unforgivable ignorance
and insensitivity, which can no longer be borne and should
no longer be admired. We have no sooner stepped over the
threshold of the Church than, even before falling on our
knees before its holiness, we venture to begin “feeding” the
Church with the intelligentsia’s nonsensical moralism, hand-
ing out the same old anti-Christian structure and forgetting
the long road already traveled by the Russian intelligentsia,
from the “childlike prattle” of Belinsky 3 to the insolence of
Pisarev, 4 and from the armed bullying of the Bolsheviks to
the empty “liberal thought” of today. Knowing nothing of true
culture ourselves, we cut up its living body with the frivolity
of a Khlestakov: 6 we swear by the names of Rublev, 6 Push-
kin, Dostoyevsky and Blok, 7 while at the same time rejecting

3- V. G. Belinsky (1811-1848), the leading critic of the early nineteenth cen-
tury and a champion of liberalism and socially committed litem-
ture. — Trans.

4. D. I. Pisarev (1841-1868), a radical literary critic who considered himself
one of Belinsky s heirs and became the apostle of Nihilistic material-
ism.— Trans.

5. The hero of Gogol’s The Inspector-General . — Trans.

6. Andrei Rublev (1370-1430), a monk and Russia’s greatest icon painter. —

1RANS.

7. Alexander Blok (1880-1921), celebrated Symbolist poet and prominent
Russian literary figure in the period leading up to the prominent revolu-
tion. — Trans.

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

St. Sergius of Radonezh , 8 St. Serafim of Sarov , 9 the Fathers of
Optyna 10 and Father Pavel Florensky, without whom a full
understanding of the nature of their contemporaries' genius
is hardly possible. Insisting that the Revelation, the Word, all
that the Divine Liturgy and the writings of the Holy Fathers
contain, are not enough to satisfy contemporary philosophers
and contemporary man in general, we appeal to “contempo-
rary thought" — to Western philosophy, the Enlightenment
and humanism, forgetting that all the wise words of the En-
lightenment led only to the Paris Convention and the guillo-
tine, even as the selfless purity of the Russian Nihilists and
the People's Will 11 group led to the Lubyanka 12 and to Ko-
lyma . 13

It is quite possible to imagine a model of this kind of prob-
ably quite unsanctified “return" to religion, to faith and the
Orthodox Church. Such a “conversion" would not involve
any doubt as to the truth of the intelligentsia's secular faith,
but would be rather a renunciation of the intelligentsia envi-
ronment with its self-satisfied confidence in itself. This is the
same path of pride, but one which reflects a despair of really
changing anything in our monstrous reality. It is the path of
compromise and coming to terms with oneself — the ex-
change of one set of concepts for another, the interpolation of

8. A fourteenth-century monk who founded the famous Monastery of the
Holy Trinity northeast of Moscow in 1337 and spearheaded a monastic re-
vival through his example of asceticism and toil. — Trans.

9. A nineteenth-century monk who revived the tradition of asceticism and
self-renunciation in the Russian monasteries and emphasized personal hu-
mility and service to the people. — Trans.

10. The name given to the monks of Optyna Monastery south of Moscow in
the nineteenth century. The most famous of them was Father Ambrose, por-
trayed as Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov. The monastery was
regularly visited by prominent intellectuals of the time, including Do-
stoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Vladimir Solovyov. — Trans.

11. The name of a militant revolutionary organization established in 1879
with the object of overthrowing tsarism. It was responsible for the assassina-
tion of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. — Trans.

12. The most notorious of the Soviet secret police prisons and the one to
which most of the prominent victims of Stalin's purges were sent. It houses
the headquarters of the secret police and is situated on Dzerzhinsky Square
in the center of Moscow. — Trans.

13. See note on page 146. — Trans.

157

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

a certain attractive symbolism and of a beautiful metaphorical
language into the commonly accepted, boringly familiar way
of looking at the world. At the same time, nothing much
seems to change, least of all “I Myself,” with my freedom-
loving, struggling soul’s vast experience of life, my set code
of morals, standards and truth, my great wealth of knowledge
of the latest twentieth-century achievements, which surpass
all previous achievements of human culture and have man-
aged to throw off the dross of two thousand years of supersti-
tion. Besides, when I come to the Church I come into contact
with the mysterious life of the people who, strangely enough
(probably because of the humility and slavish obedience they
have been endlessly praised for), have preserved this decay-
ing institution in all its poetic charm. I am no longer alone,
no longer one of a group of “heroes” (for whom, as the terri-
ble past and recent experiences have shown, the road to be-
trayal and treachery is so simple and easy). How tempting it
is now to use this beautiful ancient institution as a vehicle for
one’s own beneficial aims, to enrich it with modem intellec-
tual insight, to shake up its hoary ideas and from here, from
the eminence of the pulpit, to address — not the same old
crowd of like-minded associates, with their sordid affairs and
intrigues, but the people themselves, the whole wide coun-
try, those whom their entire history has taught to listen and
to preserve the Word spoken here. After all, like Tolstoy, I
have not “gone out of my mind” so that, like some old
woman, I seriously believe that one and three are the same,
that the world was created in six days, that angels and devils
actually exist — but I “accept” the rules of the game, sanc-
tified by centuries, I am ready even to gulp down wine di-
luted with water and chew dry bread “cut in the proper
way,” for I am convinced that all those around me “know the
truth” as well as I do. Nor am I being sacrilegious when I do
this — I observe the ritual in order to be not alone but with
all the others: faith demands such garments, so I squeeze
myself into them, for I have no other choice.

However, if in spite of my squeamishness I am willing to
climb into a garment so worn-out and smelling of a thousand

158

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

years of ignorance, and, like everyone else, to wear it pre-
tending that I find it light and comfortable, then I am in no
condition to undergo an inner transformation. I cannot “un-
derstand” — and so accept — that, for instance, the Orthodox
Church is the only true Church, that all other Christians —
and also unbelievers (about whose personal merits I may be
quite convinced) — are living in a state of untruth, enticed
and deluded by the devil, that their beliefs are definitely
heretical or misguided and have no place either in the
Church or in my consciousness; and that, for some reason, I
must unfailingly deny the relevance of their “truth” and their
“faith.” Why? We cross ourselves in one way — they cross
themselves in another; they walk around the altar in a dif-
ferent direction, or sing “alleluia” differently; they have a
pope — we have a patriarch; for us the Spirit proceeds from
the Father, not from the Father and the Son. But is there not
something more important which reconciles all these dif-
ferences? Have I really come here to exchange external in-
justice for an even more repugnant injustice within the
Church? Because I cannot live freely, am I to renounce the
right to think freely? Surely this leads straight to the burn-
ings at the stake with which they used to regulate the truth in
the reign of good Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and which have
now, in our more humane age, been so easily replaced by
labor camps and long-term prisons. And that is why I insist
on the necessity of ecumenism as a first principle — before I
have yet had a chance to become either Orthodox, or Catho-
lic, or Protestant, with no understanding of the nature of our
tragic schisms, for I see no sane explanation for them that
would correspond to the spirit of the present age, except for
Tolstoy’s formulation: “The Summ hussars consider the best
regiment in the world to be the Summ hussars, while the
yellow Uhlans consider the best regiment to be the yellow
Uhlans.”

This model only superficially resembles L. Tolstoy’s Con-
fession. Tolstoy wrote that the family, science, business and
the salvation of mankind are “all illusion and stupid illu-
sion,” that “there is nothing humorous or witty, everything is

159

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

just cruel and stupid.” All religions and philosophies — from
Solomon, Buddhism and the Greek sages to Kant and Scho-
penhauer — were subjected by him to a frantic rational anal-
ysis and only confirmed the monstrous absurdity of life,
reviewed as they were by a man who could not renounce his
own rationalism. The way of faith, of attempting to under-
stand a characteristic of consciousness shared by millions and
millions of ordinary people — not “philosophers and learned
men” who found a meaning in some incomprehensible “de-
spicable false learning” — this was in fact the only way for
Tolstoy, the only possibility of escape from the rope, the
knife, or the railway track. The tragic events of his life — his
denial of the Church and its Truth, his inability to under-
stand the Incarnation and the Resurrection, original sin and
the Atonement, his confusion when faced by the sacra-
ments — reveal that same old tendency to deify Man, with
his inability to resist temptation, that same alluring path of
unswerving cast-iron logic, leading ultimately to the An-
tichrist and the Grand Inquisitor. In spite of this, Tolstoy’s
fearless integrity held no trace of self-interest, or, rather, of
calculation; his soul passionately longed to find some kind of
meaning in life that would not be destroyed by the inevita-
bility of death.

In the modem model I have given there is, in spite of the
similarity of the conclusions drawn, no trace of Tolstoy’s
tragic ability to grasp the essence of a question. Nowadays
there is no attempt to understand another’s experience, not
even that of a close friend; everything takes the form of a
fashionable world-weariness and the moralizing sophistries
of Ivan Karamazov returning his “ticket.” Before I have even
crossed the threshold of the Church, I hold her responsible
for a child’s tears, not taking the trouble to consider that, out-
side the Church, I will never find a meaning for those tor-
tured tears, and so will not even be able to wipe them away.
I refuse to believe that my moralism, my thirst for “justice,”
my dream of founding a heaven on earth, has already re-
sulted in our present-day ocean of tears, and that — as stated

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

in the sequel to Vekhi, De Profundis 14 — there are grounds
for regarding even Tolstoy’s worldly moralism, so pure and
unselfish compared with my own, as one of the sources of
Russian revolutionary philosophy, with its demand for the
immediate establishment of goodness on earth, and of the ac-
tual results of that demand.

One can also imagine a slight variation of the same model.
I come to the Church, fully armed with faith and learning,
having despaired of my former life and broken away from it. I
know how much I shall benefit from my return to the
Church, I have thrown all my energy and maturity of spirit
into it, and the words of revelation, the ways and traditions of
Orthodoxy, have become for me as unquestionably true as
the laws of arithmetic. I understand the importance of the
outward forms, but I still think it unreasonable that I, with all
I have to offer, should be standing here in the crowd with
those who are truly unenlightened, who understand nothing
but the service; surely it is absurd to consider me no dif-
ferent from them? Besides, do I really need an intermediary
in a priest’s vestment, of whose human weaknesses I am in
no doubt, and whose learning and spiritual gifts I have every
reason to suspect? I am not, of course, a Protestant, I am
aware of the undying eminence of the Mystical Church, but
in this situation, considering this Church’s actual empirical
insignificance and slavish dependence on an atheist power,
what spiritual food can it give me? And already, at this point,
despite knowing about it, I have forgotten that pride of spirit
is one of the worst sins, “the first and last of all evils” (St.
Gregory Sinaiticus), that a little humility and meekness are
worth more than all my learning, and already I want to re-
treat, to stay in myselfl So the world of my soul becomes for
me the only Church, and this shrine has nothing to do with
the insignificance of historical Russian Orthodoxy. I intend to
sacrifice myself for the Orthodox, to pray for their sins: they
would not understand freedom, even if it were given to them,
and in fact they don’t need it — for how many centuries has
14. See Introduction, page vii. — Trans.

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

the obedient flock consigned its would-be saviors to the
flames! And so on. From here the path leads straight to the
feverish fantasies of Ivan Karamazov.

However, Tolstoy and the heroes of Dostoyevsky were not
the first to put their morality before humble submission to
Providence. Over two thousand years ago there lived in the
land of Uz a man whose sufferings and the injustice he
clearly perceived caused him openly to challenge the Lord.

“Perish the day when I was bom, and the night on which it
was said ‘A man is conceived’ so began the revolt of Job.
“Why do the wicked enjoy long life, hale in old age . . . they
live to see their children settled, their kinsfolk and descen-
dants flourishing; their houses are secure and safe. . . . They
drive off the orphan’s ass and lead away the widow’s ox. . . .
They jostle the poor out of the way. . . . The destitute hud-
dle together . . . naked and bare they pass the night, in the
cold they have nothing to cover them. . . . Far from the city
they groan like dying men, and like wounded men they cry
out, but God pays no heed to their prayer. . .

This is the tragic fate of Job, deprived of everything he
possessed, covered in boils and sores, sitting in the dust, cry-
ing out for death and shaking his fists at the Lord, with his
horrified friends trying to stop him. Surely Job’s fate can be
seen as a prophetic analogy to the fate of Russia throughout
her history, to the fate of her great men and of her prophets
and of thousands of simple people, who summoned God and
reproached Him, who threatened Him, collected “evidence”
against Him and drew up a “bill” for Him to settle — for a
child’s tears and for Kolyma, for the murder of the emperor
and of his mother, for the destruction of sacred treasures, the
corruption of the entire nation, and their own hopeless state?

It would seem that Chaadayev 15 was right when, a
hundred and fifty years ago, he proclaimed that our nation
does not constitute a “uniquely necessary portion of man-
kind,” but that it exists merely in order to “provide, at some
time, some great object lesson for the world.” How incongru-
ous, though significant, that these words did not so much
15. See note 4 on page 150. — Trans.

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

strike holy terror into his contemporaries and following gen-
erations of Russians, as provoke in them a kind of morbid
thrill . 16 And in general, pouring abuse on your own country,
despising its history and the character of its people, excitedly
reviling all that any other country would traditionally have
been proud of — all this has been considered fashionable in
our country for many decades now. However, this perhaps
shows the greatness of our people, the kind of character they
have: a great people does not fear abuse and they will readily
laugh at themselves, even in the most distorted of mirrors, for
they know even worse things about themselves — and in this
simplicity lies the strength of a nation, the knowledge of
something else within itself, which cannot be seen except
through the eyes of love. “Don’t be downcast,” says one of
Leskov’s 17 heroines, “other lands survive through being
praised, but ours is strengthened even by abuse.”

What happens, however, when such abuse is not the result
of indifference and superficiality but is uttered by a genius,
and is echoed by people whose integrity and nobility of mind
cannot be doubted? “Love of one’s country is a beautiful
thing,” wrote Chaadayev, “but love of truth is even more
beautiful.” So what is this truth, what does it consist of and
why should the Russian oppose it so heatedly to his country?

A few months before his death, while in the most difficult
circumstances in both his public and private life, Pushkin
wrote to Chaadayev after reading his pamphlet: “Although
personally I have a sincere affection for the Emperor, I am
far from enthused by all that I see around me. As a writer, I
am irritated, as a man with prejudices I am offended, but I
swear on my honor that I would not change my country for
anything on earth, nor wish for a different history than the
history of our ancestors, the history God gave us.”

What are we to call this — ignorance, indifference, self-

16. “How sweet it is to hate your motherland and long for its destruc-
tion” — these are the words of Pecherin, one of the first Russian emigrants,
who later became a Catholic monk in the West.

17. Nikolai Leskov (1831-1895), novelist and short-story writer, noted for
the richness of his colloquial style and extensive knowledge of middle- and
lower-class life. — Trans.

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

defense or perhaps even self-interest? Today we would call it
ignorance, for a man’s relations with the emperor, however
involved, and the writer’s troubles, however weighty the
troubles of a genius might be, and some personal “prejudi-
ces” — what are these compared with our present knowl-
edge, when we have been given The Gulag Archipelago and
when, tomorrow perhaps, the Lubyanka archives will be
thrown open so that the earth itself will shudder. Perhaps,
perhaps, but can evil really be measured by quantity alone?
And will the unloosed secrets of those bloodstained cellars
really weigh more heavily than the tears of one tortured
child? Can we find anything new to say to the Lord today
which the man from the land of Uz, trembling in his frenzy,
did not throw at Him, despite the piety he had shown before
his tribulations came upon him? Or have we no longer any
strength left, have we come to the limit of our endurance?
“Who is this, whose ignorant words cloud my Design in
darkness?”

The Lord knew and loved His servant Job, and marked
him out by testing him. The Lord appeared to him out of the
whirlwind, so that Job not only heard Him with his own ears
but was also enabled to see Him. And Job repudiated what
he had said and repented in dust and ashes. Can we still not
see the finger of God pointing at us? Were the monsters Be-
hemoth and Leviathan not enough of a revelation for us? And
do we not recognize in today’s events the whirlwind, in
which the sound of a Voice (and not only a Voice) should be
clearly audible to us? Do we still refuse to hear with our ears
and see with our eyes, our hearts trembling at last in our un-
fathomable guilt for the blood that continues to gush and
gush from the wounds of our Savior — can we still not see
the path that is so clearly mapped out for us?

That path is straight and stony, it shines through fog,
smoke and blood, so ineffably leading to the land which can
only be reached through love that it would take a truly
clouded mind to mistake it, walk past it or stray from it
Clearly visible under the stars, it is precisely etched across
the centuries, leading from one great trial to the next and

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even harsher tribulation, and on the bends, like landmarks or
signposts pointing the righf way, stand churches, saints, wan-
dering pilgrims and prophets. This path is like a flowing
river, sweeping some things into its stream, casting others
aside, but never drying up, even when the going gets so hard
that it seems to have completely disappeared in blood-
colored mist, and the Lord seems to have forgotten and aban-
doned this world. But the river keeps on flowing, its course
has been set for eternity. And this miracle is no mere meta-
phor: the Russian Orthodox Church was made manifest to the
world a thousand years ago — she survived the Tartar in-
vasion and Peter the Great, and still exists today. And let
every unbeliever place his hands in the gaping wounds of
that Church’s body. She stands immutably in the place where
she arose, God’s witness and God’s Design — for nothing can
distort her sacraments or corrupt her teachings.

This is indeed an enigma and a mystery, a miracle, which
has borne witness so many times already that “my Father has
never yet ceased His work and I am working too’’ (John
5:17). Although we touch upon the miraculous here, we are
unable to understand its mystery, which for so many cen-
turies has disturbed the rest of the world existing within an
entirely different and more open framework. However, it is
precisely the impossibility of finding a logical explanation for
this reality that constitutes the Church’s mysterious secret
and explains the Russian’s inability to tear either himself out
of the Church or the Church out of himself. All the obvious
advantages of that apparently open system are constantly
being nullified and exhausted, and we seem to see those
wonderful well-meaning impulses going up in smoke before
our very eyes, so that man is brought back again and again to
compromising with the age-old temptations. Whereas here
everything remains for us as it has always been — each
movement of the spirit, our weaknesses and our achieve-
ments, the fields around us, our mystical ties with the whole
of this suffering world and with everyday life, which we can
hardly escape. It all remains and, like a grain of com, dies in
the earth in order to bear much fruit; it remains and escapes

RUSSIAN DESTINIES

into the atmosphere, together with the soul that is so hated in
this world, and is “kept safe for eternal life” (John 12:25).
And this is the reason why you cannot leave the Church,
because your suffering, which in a moment of weakness
makes you abandon her, remains within her and cannot go
with you. You yourself become enmeshed in rusty barbed
wire and what the outside world perhaps sees as a mere
change of place, of climate or of material circumstances, a
journey, here in fact becomes flight. And it is perfectly true
that you cannot get away from that fact. This is indeed the
Truth, that country “more beautiful” than ours, and if we lis-
ten to the rumble of the earth muttering beneath our feet and
in a moment of revelation glimpse the last thousand years
flashing past, we understand that there is no fatal contra-
diction in all this, only the dawning antinomy of love, for as
someone quite truthfully said: “To live in this country is im-
possible; here you can only seek salvation.”

As we have already said, this path has its beginnings in the
extremes of despair, when you have not yet found the Truth
but you know you cannot live without it. You give up all else
for her, your future, your old ties and relationships, your
heartfelt desire for great deeds, and you ask nothing in re-
turn — no promises, no proofs, no earthly treasures. You
forget your own self, you cease to complain and grieve over
your own burdens and failures; instead, you spend all your
time cleansing yourself of the filth of subjectivity and pride,
of pseudofreedom with all its enslaving temptations, the
temptations of the age. Already, without your knowledge,
while you are scrabbling on the brink of the abyss and stum-
bling in the dark, a light, twinkling like a precious stone, has
been growing within you. You step across the threshold of
the Church as her humble son.

“Day by day through the centuries, the Church has been
gathering in its treasures. . . . The tears of the pure in heart
have fallen on it like precious pearls. Both heaven and earth
have made their contributions of joy in the communion with
God, of sacred agonies of keen repentance, fragrant prayer
and quiet yearning for heaven, eternal seeking and eternal

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finding, gazing into the unfathomable depths of eternity, and
childlike peace of mind. . . . The centuries passed and all
this increased and accumulated. . . .”

You fall on your knees, and are not alone . . . you are al-
ready in the Truth, and every spiritual effort you make, every
sigh falling from your lips, brings to your aid the entire re-
serve of beneficial strength stored here.

It sounds lovely, they will say, but is quite absurd, for if
the eighteenth century only contrived to ridicule it, the twen-
tieth century has spread bloodstained filth all over it. Yet the
Truth lives on, the same today as two thousand years ago, in
a church full of kneeling worshipers, and though the priest
may be unworthy to celebrate the Mass, angels celebrate it
for him. The gates of Hell cannot prevail against the Church.
You have no way back now, for if the Truth does not exist,
your existence has no meaning. So you go on repeating and
whispering the words your countryman left for you and paid
for with his life in one of the unknown camps of the north.
You are no longer concerned with your adversaries — you
have parted company with them forever: “Steer clear of fool-
ish speculations, genealogies, quarrels and controversies
over the law; they are pointless and unprofitable” (Titus 3:9).

You are not alone, because beside you, cursed by men but
not forgotten by God, Who has manifested His Will through
it, stands your whole country, which throughout the ages has
always stored all its spiritual treasures — its culture, its great
achievements and its holy relics — here in the Church. You
are needed by your nation — not by those who live only in
fear of her, who know nothing of her past and care nothing
for her future, for whom the present consists only of them-
selves. You are needed by the Church, and thus by its every
member, for “all of us, united with Christ, form one body”
(Rom. 12:5). You are needed by your country — by Russia.

Meanwhile, outside the Church walls a kind of unceasing
witches’ Sabbath seems to be going on: aging executioners
are pensioned off and replaced by hypocrites who are
ready — in the right circumstances and at the first sign — to
take up their predecessors’ old habits. The tide of accusa-

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

tions, yielding to force, subsides, only to rise again at the first
smell of weakness. Purity and simplicity yield to cynicism
and calculation, but later return armed with new tactical
weapons. Heroism appears in so many disguises — from the
most noble to the most openly selfish — that its true nature
can scarcely be distinguished: wounded pride, conceit, hys-
teria, defiance that is frightened of its own shadow, the desire
to settle accounts, inflamed ambition, undisguised oppor-
tunism, the fear of being passed by, left out or behind, curios-
ity, pillage, speculation — what a variety of apparel,
adornments and roles, what tender solicitude it displays for
the welfare of the despised people and their culture 1 What
thunderbolts are loosed against the indifference and cow-
ardly habits concealed beneath the traditional, centuries-
old, tried and tested slave armor that openly calls itself the
salvation of the individual soul, or else masquerades in the
long-since-compromised religious robes of collaborationism
or pitiful otherworldly loyalties. The blustering self goes on
the rampage; intoxicated with its own freedom, it has no
need of the Sole Way or of God’s Law. The Absolute yields
place to relativity, in which even conscience sinks; individ-
uality disappears and man no longer makes a free choice, but
has it made for him: profit, safety, the opinion of others, good
relations with someone, praise or blame — like fairground
demons they mechanically seize the next victim in line and
the machinery goes into action: promises, threats, sops to
hidden passions or ambitious designs. As if we had abso-
lutely no Law at all, as if the Way had not been shown to us
and no Commandments given us, obedience to which
requires true courage and heroic zeal of man, qualities which
do not and cannot exist in the brassy fairground obsessed by
its own passions.

The praying Church floats in candlelight, the visages of the
saints painted on the dark icons in the gilded frames come to
life and intone, together with the rest of the Church, the ring-
ing proclamation from the choir of the Beatitudes, announc-
ing their recognition of the Truth in this world and of eternal

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life in the next: the poor in spirit, the sorrowing, the meek,
those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful,
the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted
for the sake of righteousness, the slandered and abused,
those who rejoice because they suffer for the sake of Christ.
They have already renounced their own selves and so have
found inner courage and strength — we need so many more
of them! In thinking of them, the true heirs and participants
in the Heavenly Kingdom, we already see the “azure of eter-
nity” which Father P. Florensky wrote about.

Is there anything in the world nobler or more difficult than
this ineffable toil?

You walk out into the church porch, with the snow trick-
ling slowly down from a gray sky, and then into the town that
has expelled you from it, you go out to meet the people you
have taken your leave of. You know that, as in the “last days”
in the Apostle’s words, “hard times” are approaching (but
when have times ever been easy in Russia?). You go out into
the town, where you still live; you walk through the crowd,
through the whirling fairground, and how can you help but
see it, hear it and be drawn into it? But even here, “do not be
afraid of the sufferings to come,” for God knows “your
works” and “where you live; it is the place where Satan has
his throne; and yet you are holding fast to my cause and do
not deny your faith in me” ( Rev. 2:10-13).

You will never be alone from now on, no matter what may
happen to you. What does the fairground of this world and
your whole former life mean to you, when you know that ev-
erything has been arranged in accordance with God’s Word?
Even the Apostle Paul had insufficient time to tell of all
those who “were stoned, were sawed in two, were put to the
sword, went about dressed in skins of sheep and goats, in
poverty, distress and misery. They were too good for a world
like ours. They were refugees in deserts and on hills, hiding
in caves and holes in the ground. These also, one and all, are
commemorated for their faith; and yet they did not enter
upon the promised inheritance because, with us in mind,

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

God had made a better plan, that only in company with us
should they reach their perfection” (Heb. 11:37-40).

They did not enter upon the promised inheritance be-
cause, with us in mind, God made a better plan. . . .And the
town weeps, curses and raves. You have just emerged from
the church, having stood through the Liturgy, prayed for all
those whose good works you have remembered, and asked
the Savior to forgive their sins and evil actions. You plow
your own furrow, carry your cross, and no one can know the
end of his journey. The deeds of every man will be revealed
in the end, and then it will be too late to think again, for
“what appears to some men as light, to others will be a burn-
ing fire, depending upon what material and qualities it finds
in each” (the Blessed Gregory the Theologian). The Truth
has been set down for eternity, and nothing can prevent its
being loudly proclaimed on the appointed day. It exists even
now and one day it will emerge into God’s light, a terrible
warning of the inescapability of judgment, both earthly and
divine.

What then can you do, I ask once more, for if the divine
judgment (which nothing can escape) is coming and if the
Day, of which we can know nothing (even though the rosy
glow of the domes of our churches is getting brighter and
brighter), is nigh, then surely it is only through our own
courage and endeavor that the earthly judgment can be
made? Can we afford to put it off, shifting the responsibility
onto other shoulders, knowing in the depths of our trembling
souls that this Day must come (and what if it doesn’t?). This
is one of our most tragic problems. I cannot take it upon
myself to resolve it, but I know for sure that it cannot be
resolved by hatred, without an understanding love of the
country in which we live, nor by separating our country and
the Truth, with which it is inextricably linked (despite our
terrible history and our fear-ridden present) by the very inex-
orability of its destiny. In the final analysis, your personal
choice and path are nothing more nor less than your choice
and path. But you are not alone — never forget that! Nor
should you forget that “the Truth itself,” as the Blessed Ma-

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RUSSIAN DESTINIES

kary the Great has said, “impels man to seek the Truth/’ And
please believe that “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,”
as Pascal put it, “and not the God of the philosophers and
learned men” will come to you one day, will take you by the
hand and guide you, if you truly wish it.

171

The Schism Between the Church

and the World

EVGENY BARABANOV

In every Mass we profess our faith in the one, holy, Catholic
and apostolic Church. We believe in its holiness, for we see
in it the image of Christ's presence. And here on earth we al-
ready touch the fullness of the life to come. But we are not
alone. Among unbelievers too there are many who perceive
in the word “Church" the reality of a certain unknown and
higher life. A desire to approach this reality and somehow to
come into contact with it draws them to the churches on
Easter Eve. They wait patiently for midnight, when they will
hear the distant singing from inside the church, when the
worshipers will come out in procession, and the cry “Christ
is risen I" will resound over the crowd. They wait for the ac-
complishment of the shining mystery which — who
knows? — might draw them as well into this profound reality
called the Church, admit them to it, unfold its secret and
unite it with their own spiritual life. And those who take part
in the mystery itself — those in communion with the glory of
Christ — feel themselves victors. “Let God arise and may his
enemies be dispersed," the believers sing with fervor. And
in these paschal cries the Church seems to rise to its full
height. The evil of the world, its darkness and mendacity, its
sinfulness and violence, are vanquished by the Resurrection.

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SCHISM BETWEEN CHURCH AND WORLD

And the waves of universal renewal and joy emanating from
the celebrants seem to take a hold on the unbelievers as well.
The victory seems to become real and actual, not somewhere
beyond the frontiers of time and space, but here, today, now.

But the everyday, earthly, human reality of the Church
presents an agonizing contrast. And this contrast also starts
with the building itself. In our country a church is a “place
for the performance of the rite of a religious community.”
This community is registered by the organs of the state. And
state functionaries are appointed to supervise its life. This
supervision consists in making the “liturgical department” as
spiritually isolated as possible, harmless and even comic,
from the point of view of the ideology of the state. And all the
participants in the “rite/’ the hierarchs, the priests depen-
dent on them, and laymen — in other words all the other ele-
ments that constitute the Church — meekly accept this
situation and seem fully reconciled to their dependence.

Let us not hasten to accuse the Church. The fact that it has
been forced to go “whither it will not” might still not have
done great spiritual harm. The problem lies in how we de-
fine our attitude to this bondage, how we manage to accom-
modate both it and the triumphant paschal strength and joy.
Currently some Christians bear this enforced bondage like a
heavy obligation “for the sake of the preservation of the
Church,” while others have got used to it, acquired a taste for
it, and have perhaps even come to like the contrast.

But despite this manifest and indubitable submissiveness
of the Church to the state, even people who are far from
being Christians are expecting some general renewal in it.
They want to see in the Russian Church an effective force
that is capable of opposing mendacious ideological bureau-
cratism with genuine spiritual values, of affirming moral prin-
ciples and slaking the people’s thirst with the “water of life.”

People who know ecclesiastical life well are usually less
optimistic. Having experienced within themselves all the ter-
rible ailments and dilemmas of contemporary ecclesiastical
reality, they are inclined to think that the Church will only
be able to have an impact on society when society itself

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SCHISM BETWEEN CHURCH AND WORLD

grows sufficiently free and democratic to liberate the Church
from the political fetters imposed by the state.

For the time being I shall not discuss which of these points
of view corresponds more faithfully to reality. Those who see
in Christianity the affirmation of an absolute truth about man
and human society are undoubtedly right. And it is only on
the basis of this higher truth that it is possible to warrant the
exceptional value of man, the value of his life and what he
creates. Christianity alone holds the key to the deepest
meaning of social life, culture and husbandry. The history of
the Christian nations has evolved in the search for this mean-
ing, notwithstanding all their frustrations and failures. Such
has been Russia’s path as well, after adopting the Orthodox
faith from Byzantium in the tenth century and through Chris-
tianity becoming a part of European culture. Learning, art,
law, and the concept of the state were all given to us by
Christianity. And throughout the years of tribal feuds, foreign
invasions, domestic upheavals and crises it was the Russian
Church that always preserved and maintained the living cul-
tural tradition and was the foundation of the nation’s and the
state’s integrity. In the feats of its saints and pious men the
Russian people has never ceased to behold the unfading light
of a higher moral truth, which became the object of a quest
that permeates the whole of great Russian literature. And
looking back we realize that Christian ideas and ideals lay
beneath even those aspects of life and culture which, it
would seem, were not related to them on the surface. We
need not mention the heritage which has become an inalien-
able part of the spiritual life of all mankind: the cathedrals
and icons, Sergius of Radonezh and Andrei Rublev, 1 the
archpriest Awakum 2 3 and Serafim Sarovsky, 8 Gogol and Dos-
toyevsky, Tolstoy and Solovyov, 4 the pleiade of twentieth-

1. See note 6 on page 156. — Trans.

2. Archpriest Awakum (1620-1681), leader of the “Old Believers,” a group
of schismatics who refused to accept the ecclesiastical reforms of Patriarch
Nikon. His Life is a remarkable autobiographical account of his wanderings
in exile in Siberia. — Trans.

3. See note 9 on page 157.— Trans.

4. Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), philosopher, mystic and poet who was

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SCHISM BETWEEN CHURCH AND WORLD

century thinkers and, finally, those recent innumerable mar-
tyrs whose hagiographies have not yet been written and who
are remembered by only a few surviving eyewitnesses.

All this is so. And many who are troubled by the fete of the
Russian Church and genuinely participate in contemporary
Church life do not, of course, deny it. Without belittling the
highest achievements of Christian culture, without doubting
the transforming power of the “good news” of Christianity,
they remind us of something else as well — of the profound
and agonizing crisis which is gnawing away at the Russian
Church from within.

After the dozens of years when martyrdom was passed over
in silence, when hypocrisy and servility reigned, it was two
valiant priests, Nikolai Eshilman and Gleb Yakunin, who first
referred publicly to this crisis. In their “Open Letter” to Pa-
triarch Alexius, sent in November 1965, they protested not
only against the illegal actions of the leaders and officials of
the Council for Religious Affairs — actions which grossly vio-
lated their own legislation — but also against the craven,
hypocritical position adopted by the higher ecclesiastical ad-
ministration. They showed convincingly how a significant
part of the governing episcopate, with voluntary silence or
cunning connivance, had assisted the atheists to close
churches, monasteries and religious schools, to liquidate re-
ligious communities, to establish the illegal practice of regis-
tering christenings, and had yielded to them control over the
appointment and transfer of priests.

That was roughly the time of the statements by Archbishop
Ermogen, imprisoned in a monastery for his protests, Boris
Talantov, who died in prison, the historian and publicist Ana-
toly Krasnov-Levitin, who was recently released from a labor
camp, and many others.

Their voices sounded again in the Lenten letter from Alex-
ander Solzhenitsyn to Patriarch Pimen.

The patriarch did not reply to Solzhenitsyn, but his si-

one of the founders of the Symbolist movement in Russia. His ideas have
recently made a comeback with many dissidents in die Soviet Union.

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SCHISM BETWEEN CHURCH AND WORLD

lence, and the fact that he forbade the two priests to officiate
in church any more, provide eloquent proof of the justice of
these reproaches. ^ n

Both Solzhenitsyn and the authors of the “Open Letter to
Patriarch Alexius (this is where they part company from the
all-understanding and passive “ecclesiastical realists”), not
only bear witness to the truth, but also call for the vicious
circle to be broken — for people to overcome the fetters of
lies, fear, lack of faith, and connivance through personal sac-
rifice. It was a remarkable, deeply moral and indispensable
summons. But why did these calls not find any response
among the Christians of the Church? What stops us, evi-
dently, is not just the sacrifice (Christianity is sacrificial
through and through, the “idea” of sacrifice is accepted by
all), but something else, something profounder that finnly,
though perhaps not very obviously, holds us back. What is it?

Father Sergei Zheludkov, in his open letter to Solzheni-
tsyn, endeavored to indicate that the main reason we were
deprived of the possibility of initiative and choice was the to-
talitarian system of our state (“a strictly uniformly organized
System, administered from a unified Center”), in which the
legal Church could not be an island of freedom.

“What remains for us to do in such a situation? he wrote.
“Should we say ‘All or nothing?’ Should we try to go un-
derground, which in the present System is unthinkable? Or
should we somehow go along with the System and use, as
long as we can, those possibilities which are open to us? The
Russian hierarchy took the second choice, and the result is
the evil that is happening today. But there was no other
choice .”

Father Zheludkov examines the crisis of our ecclesiastical
life in the traditional framework of the opposition of Church
and state. But to what extent can such an approach to the
problem give an exhaustive answer?

I will not argue as to whether or not the possibility of
another choice existed in the past. But why is it that today, as
in the past, the possibilities of choice are limited to two alter-
natives: an underground Church or joining the system? Why

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SCHISM BETWEEN CHURCH AND WORLD

exclude so completely what would seem to be a fully lawful
and natural path — a legal and open demand for the rights
which are indispensable for the normal existence of the
Church? It is evident that this question, which is implied un-
equivocally in Solzhenitsyn’s letter and which Father Zhe-
ludkov refrained from discussing, presupposes some clear
and definite answer. And we all know what it is: neither the
patriarch, nor the synod, nor the Congregation of Bishops has
any intention whatever of trying to obtain from the govern-
ment any rights for the Church. Most likely they will not
even defend them, but will surrender them wordlessly, with
all the rights they already have, at the first demand of some
bureaucrat. That at least is what was happening until just
recently. And it is clear that we are dealing not simply with
“administration from a unified Center,” but with something
else, which we are unwilling to give serious thought to and
which we do not consider needs discussion.

But let us be candid: our spiritual life is not totally subordi-
nated to orders from the “Center,” and in any case not di-
rectly. It was not, after all, orders from above but conformist
inertia that led the ecclesiastical intelligentsia to react to the
letters of the two Muscovite priests and of Solzhenitsyn as to
a new sort of “spiritual pride” and “temptation of the devil.”
Many ecclesiastical Christians seriously and repeatedly re-
proached them for not believing in the power of prayer, for
failing to understand the essence of the Christian life and in-
terfering in other people’s business, for proudly and ar-
rogantly breaking the peace of the Church instead of meekly
knowing their place “like everyone else.” These words were
uttered with total sincerity, with a feeling of profound grief
and even of compassion for the “troublemakers.” But surely
there is something enigmatic about this sincere grief?

The position of the Church in a totalitarian world is indeed
tragic, but this tragedy inclines us to forget that our present
position is inseparably bound up with the tragedies of the
past — which now seem to us to have been almost idyllic.
And in attempting to comprehend the profound sources of
the current tragedy of ecclesiastical Christianity, shall we not

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be forced to recognize that the fateful malaise arose long
before our “strictly uniformly administered social System”?
If we trace the mainstream of our history back up toward its
source, will we not find, under the glitter of gilded pomp, all
those so familiar features? And preserving our academic im-
partiality, despite the seductiveness of past eras with their
majestic attempts at theocratic kingdoms and church-state
“symphonies,” surely we shall be obliged to acknowledge
that in Byzantium and Russia ideas about the Kingdom of
God and the kingdom of Caesar too often merged and be-
came interchangeable. The subjection of the Church by the
state is an old eastern tradition. The Emperors Constantine,
Constantius, Theodosius and Justinian (not to mention the
later period) openly interfered with the internal life of the
Church, suppressing, dictating and avenging. We venerate
the holiness of .the Nicene Creed, but our Christian con-
science will never be reconciled to the conclusion of the
Council of Nicaea, when the emperor exiled all the dis-
senters. That was not an isolated case — practically the
whole historical path of Orthodoxy is peppered with them.
For the state, as history has shown from the Edict of Milan to
the present, it has always been desirable to have a “tame
Orthodoxy” which would serve the ends of autocratic power.

Of course the “union” of the Church and the state under
Constantine, and the Church-state “symphony,” whose ideo-
logist and legislator was Justinian, differ sharply from the
contemporary state of affairs. The Byzantine state considered
itself a Christian state and the emperors, when they subordi-
nated the Church to their needs, nevertheless regarded
themselves as the instruments of God’s will. The organism of
the Church did not so much suffer from the external force of
the state as secretly go along with it, from inside, in a process
of identifying the Church with the empire, of erasing the
borders between Church and state, of affirming their close
(too close!) unity. It was in this false perspective of an osten-
sibly self-evident “symphony” that the historical fate of the
Russian Orthodox Church developed until the 1917 revolu-
tion. And when tsarism fell, the Church suddenly found itself

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face to face with a hostile, atheistic state which applied
rather different methods from those of the Christian Em-
perors.

However, we are not saying this in order to attribute all the
ills of the Church solely to the negative influence of the state
on the Church. This has become the usual subterfuge and
resort to which people have recourse in order to avoid having
to resolve all the agonizing problems of contemporary Chris-
tianity. We are talking about something else — about our ec-
clesiastical consciousness as such, the essence of our
religious attitude to the life of the world and of our attitude to
the System. There is nothing surprising in the fact tha* - an
atheistic state tries to reduce the life of the Church to the rite
alone, or, in the words of believers, to turn it into a “fulfiller
of needs.” From the point of view of the ideology ruling in
our country, religion is the “opium of the people” and as
such, as a result of the destruction of its “social roots” and
the building of a new society, must sooner or later become
superfluous and die off. But insofar as vestiges of religion
continue to exist, believers are afforded the possibility of
“performing the rite,” a possibility guaranteed by the Consti-
tution . 5 At the same time it is intended that, under the influ-
ence of new forms of social life and the propaganda of a
materialistic philosophy, the “vestiges of religion” among
our population will finally vanish. One must admit that such
a point of view is certainly clear and logical. What is surpris-
ing, however, is that this particular ideological position
should begin to sap our own ecclesiastical consciousness. It
goes without saying that we do not profess the necessity for
us ourselves to die off, but more often than not we do regard
the present state of affairs as something natural and normal.

Here we enter a world of depressing paradoxes. The first of
them says that the external limitations on the life of the
Church correspond to the secret desires of many ecclesias-
tics. These desires stem from the assumption that the Mass in

5. Nevertheless, this possibility is strictly limited by the closure of
churches, by the refusal to open new ones and the imposition of constraints
on seminaries and monasteries.

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itself is Christianity, and that the Christian needs nothing be-
sides. All the rest merely distracts and disperses. “It is not
our business to interfere where we are not asked. Not all the
churches have been closed, thank God, the Mass is cele-
brated according to the book, lots of people attend on feast
days, what else do we need?” And many people coming to
Christianity today try to adopt this ideology as the genuine
position of the Church, and, having adopted it, make a fetish
of it and a compulsory standard.

But this is exactly what the state has been dinning into the
Church for half a century: “You say you are not of this world,
well then, there is nothing for you to do in this world. That is
why I forbid you to ‘set up benefit societies, cooperatives of
industrial societies; to offer material aid to your members; to
organize children’s and young persons’ groups for prayer and
other purposes, or general biblical, literary or handicraft
groups for the purpose of work or religious instruction and
the like, or to organize groups, circles or sections; to arrange
excursions and kindergartens, open libraries and reading
rooms, organize sanatoria or medical aid’ ” (“Concerning re-
ligious societies,” Resolution of the Central Committee, 8
April 1929, para. 17).

And as if in response to these prohibitions there arises
from the very depths of the Church’s consciousness, latently
and sometimes unconsciously, a certain strange under-
standing of Christianity, a certain weird and wonderful eccle-
siology. “You are right to prohibit these things. We only
multiply our sins by occupying ourselves with good works.
We have not yet learned how to pray — how could we get in-
volved in kindergartens. The Church is for prayer, and not
for worldly cares.”

In an ecclesiology such as this there is of course no room
for the problems of the Christianization of Russia. Moreover,
there comes into being a peculiar kind of Christianity which
many people try to identify with the essence of Orthodoxy , or
to vindicate by reference to the exceptional nature of our
socio-ideological system. We have already grown accustomed
to apologetics of that sort. But are they needed today? And if

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so, by whom? The crisis in our ecclesiastical life has gone too
far, but we are not alone in experiencing it. The Russian
Church is displaying with particular vividness just a few of
the symptoms of that universal malady which has today af-
fected Christianity, with varying degrees of severity, all over
the world. Therefore many of our problems need to be exam-
ined in a wider perspective, namely, that of the general crisis
of the consciousness of the Church in the secular world.

There exists not only an opposition between the Church
and the state, the Church and a totalitarian system, but also a
more fundamental opposition, that between the Church and
the world. It is precisely here that we find the origins of the
radical division of Christian life into two independent
spheres, the ecclesiastical and the sociohistorical. This divi-
sion has never been confirmed by dogma, and the Church
has more than once pronounced against the theoretical jus-
tification of this kind of dualism. All the same, the Christian
world has lived in this duality not so much in terms of its
dogma as psychologically. Even before the division became
overt, this schism between the two spheres of life had an im-
pact on the hearts and minds of Christians. It turned out to be
too hard to accept all the complexities and antinomies of the
Gospel. And that greatest of all temptations began to rear its
head — that of “simplifying” Christianity, of reducing it from
being a teaching about the new life to a mere caring for the
salvation of one’s own soul. As a result of this, the earthly
aspect of life and the whole structure of social relations
turned out to be empty and immune to the influence of the
truth.

But the genuine hope of religion, the “good news” of
Christianity about the Kingdom of God, which constitutes the
basic content of the Gospel, is not limited to the world
beyond the grave. The Kingdom of God which Christ taught
us about “is not of this world” and will be realized in full
only beyond the bounds of earthly history. But through
Christ it entered this world and became its leaven. And it did
not just “draw near,” it “resides within us.” And the begin-

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ning of this new all-embracing life is the Body of Christ, the
Church. Through it God summons mankind and the world to
perfection, to the fullness of absolute being. If the creative
transformation of the world by man is seen as the realization
of the Kingdom of God with Christ and in Christ, then the
world is not only pardoned and justified, but is also being
realized in the highest of its possible forms.

Entry into the Kingdom of God, however, and its actual re-
alization are impossible without renunciation and the strug-
gle with evil. Evil and sin are triumphant in this world; “the
world resides in evil,” and “the people have preferred dark-
ness to light.” And it is not only from the Gospel, but from all
human history and from our own experience that we know of
the “power of darkness” in the world and in ourselves. Evil
hinders us from going toward the light, drags us away from it
with thousands of enticements, temptations and illusions.
That is precisely why the Gospel teaches us not to love this
world or that which is in it.

These two aspects of the Christian attitude to the world,
active participation in its transformation and renunciation of
its temptations, turned out to be extremely difficult to recon-
cile. Heavenward aspirations often went hand in hand with
execration of the earth. Too often the ideal of salvation was
built on a foundation of inflexible renunciation of this world.
Thus salvation itself was understood as an escape from the
material world into a world of pure spirituality. This gave
rise to contempt for the flesh, the belittling of man’s creative
nature and, as a necessary consequence, a special religious
individualism. For some people these tendencies have to this
day remained the sole signs of a Christian life.

But the history of Christianity has another side which can
with justice be called its “spiritual success,” although it was
often accompanied by “historical failure.” I refer to the expe-
rience of Orthodoxy, its spiritual breakthrough to the eternal
Divine Light, the contemplation of that Light and the union
with it of the whole human being. This experience is re-
vealed to us not only in the “mental” prayer of the ascetics,
not only in theological speculation and mystical illumination,

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but in the very structure of the liturgical mystery, which
brings us to the mystery of mysteries, the Eucharist.

This is the peak of tension: God and man meet in the most
intimate and unsunderable way. And in the incomparable joy
of man’s union with the absolute Reality, the God-man Jesus
Christ, everything is filled with unutterable light and exulta-
tion. And one involuntarily feels an urge to remain stock-still;
motionless, so as to retain in oneself this joyous light. This is
the origin of the experience and excitement of eastern mo-
nastic asceticism, whose aim is “to commune with the Divine
Light.” In his profound silence and prayer the ascetic opens
himself to the action of divine grace which, as St. Symeon the
New Theologian writes, “appears with all quietness and joy,
and this light is the harbinger of the eternal Light, the radi-
ance on the face of eternal bliss. . . . The mind sinks into it,
becomes suffused with brightness, turns into light and unites
indivisibly with the very Source of Light. . . . In this state of
illumination the ascetic flickers like a flame, and he is lit in-
ternally by the Holy Ghost, and looking outward from his
own life he divines the mystery of his deification. . .

How similar that is to die ecstasy which, according to the
Gospel, was experienced by Christ’s disciples on Mount
Tabor.

But when the Divine Light vanished, Christ together with
his disciples came down into the world. He came to earth not
only for the transfiguration on Tabor. Before Him still lay the
Sermon on the Mount, the cure of the sick, the entry into
Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden,
Golgotha and, together with death, victory over its perma-
nence: the Resurrection.

It is impossible not to see in this the image of the historical
destinies of the Church. And the Apocalypse confirms it: the
Christian Church is faced with struggle; the temptation of
many and their desertion; constancy and labor; and the sum
of its earthly history will be victory for Him Who conquered
the world, and the eternal Light of Divine Glory. We have
heard of this many times, but there is always the temptation
to stop, to “wait until history ends,” to put up a tent here and

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now and contemplate — if not in the desert, or on Mount
Athos, then in church, during the Mass. In the contemplation
of the Light it is easy to forget the world and its eternal
movement. Hence that paradox, when a great spiritual ac-
complishment, the revelation to man of his high and holy
task, involves a major historical failure. But is it only a histor-
ical failure? Christian kingdoms crumble and perish, local
churches sicken and die under the yoke of dictators, the
world is convulsed by bloody revolutions and inhuman re-
gimes, and Christians seem to hear nothing of this.

We have a certain fatal insensitivity that is indestructible
and amounts to almost a contempt for history. We often talk
of the “radiant universality” of Orthodoxy, but we stare with
bewilderment at those who ask us to embody its light in ter-
restrial historical reality. Hence the tradition in which Ortho-
dox man found it easier and more preferable to discover
himself in the world of nature than to strive for the construc-
tion of the City of God on earth. He made a distinction,
which was not only religious but psychological, between na-
ture and “this world,” the cosmos and history. Contemplating
the divine energies which permeate the created world, he
lived in tune with the one and indivisible all-embracing cos-
mic mystery, in which there was no room for transformations
and personal initiative. Everything there is sacred, unshak-
able and incontrovertible till the end of time. Hence the sta-
bility of the mystique of the kingdom and the sacralization of
everyday life, clothed more often than not in the heavy robes
of ritualized symbolism. The kingdom and everyday life are
not historical categories, but religio-cosmic ones, and in
Orthodoxy they have to this day remained external to the
idea of the creative personality, its spiritual impulses and
moral imperatives.

All this does not mean of course that in the Christian East
the personality is dissolved in a cosmic-ancestral principle or
is totally absent. On the contrary, both in Byzantium and in
Russia an intense ascetic struggle took place for the forma-
tion of the Christian personality. The best evidence for this
are the numerous “Paterikons” and “Lives of the Saints.” But

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those were the peaks, surrounded on all sides by steep
slopes. The challenging import of these feats of asceticism is
usually objectivized further down, their explosive energy is
dispersed and converted into an impersonal ideology of hum-
drum asceticism, and becomes a double external measure for
the Christian life. The Christian saints who renounced the
world and history were in fact laying down new paths for the
life of the world and in so doing were actually making his-
tory. Their feat of self-renunciation and their victories over
the power of this world were a daring challenge to the natu-
ral order of nature, a creative vanquishment of human limita-
tions and an active struggle with evil. But all this has nothing
to do with that pseudoascetic indifference to history and con-
tempt for the world which form the basis for the ascetic
ideology which has been adapted to the human sphere.
In Russia this ideology has long since become the ruling
one. Particularly popular have been the ideas of obedience
and humble submission to the external authorities. They
opened the door to a conservative conformism not only in
personal ethics, but also in the life of the Church itself. The
Church and the Eucharist have lost their meaning of an in-
tegrated and creative communal life; from being a “common
cause” they have become a means of individual salvation.
The Christian’s own religiousness has become his chief
preoccupation. And in this context the concept of the Chris-
tian’s responsibility for the fete of the world has irrevocably
lost all meaning.

It seems at times that we Christians deliberately do not
wish to understand our historical failure or to admit our his-
torical sins. We shift the blame onto anyone we can find —
the state, atheism, secularization — but ourselves always re-
main only innocent victims. Our consciousness is still in
thrall to old patterns and principles, we seem powerless to
burst the bonds of these false traditions. We have still not
thrown off the medieval yoke, in which relations between
the Church and the world were conceived in terms of sover-
eignty and submission. Christianity, however, is not about
power and coercive authoritarianism, but spiritual initiative

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and daring. Is not the failure of attempts to establish theocra-
cies due to the fact that they were based on contempt for and
renunciation of that world which they simultaneously wanted
to subjugate and harness? It was there that the ideology and
practice of theocratic sovereignty and spiritual despotism
originated, the desire to fix life in lasting forms. The at-
tributes of the Church — eternity and holiness — were trans-
ferred to the theocratic kingdom. This idea of the forcible
salvation of the world also meant that the world, including
man and culture, had no independent value, that they could
be approached in a purely utilitarian way, as a means for the
realization of the Church’s aims.

The world, of course, has abandoned the Church, since the
traditional groove reserved for creativity turned out to be too
restricted for man. The energy which had accumulated over
the centuries finally burst through the dam of established
authorities and forms. Today it is not the Church but the
world which is creating a new civilization, and it is solving
the problems with which it is faced on the basis of its own
understanding of existence. The area in which the Church
can directly influence the world has been sharply reduced.
Among the turbulent forces creating culture and transforming
society, and sometimes threatening the very stones of the
Church itself, the Christian faith continues to bear witness to
its existence in the mystery of the Mass and in feats of per-
sonal sanctity and prayer. But the creative spirit which trans-
forms life and the world appears to have abandoned it.
Dragging along behind the world, the Church has been left
to adopt principles which at first were alien to it, but which
by now have become firmly established in spite of it. Even
such Western “innovations” as social Christianity, Christian
economics and sociology, new church architecture and paint-
ing, new rhythms and images in the music and poetry of the
liturgy — all this is, as it were, some sort of compulsory trib-
ute to the times, an obligatory new form having no relevance
to the heart of the matter. Hence the inner contradiction of
modem Church life, with its precarious wobbling between

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the extremes of senile protectionism, modernism, and feeble
imitation. However, neither the curses nor the blessings with
which people try to blur the sharp dividing line between the
Church and the headlong momentum of the world are able to
extinguish a feeling of tragic schism.

The sense of tragedy experienced today by every sensitive
Christian consciousness is not merely the tragedy of the
Church and Christianity in a secular world, but the tragedy of
the world itself. It is impossible for man to “settle” in the
world completely without God. Although proud of its suc-
cesses and attainments, the world sees every day more
clearly the provisional and insufficient nature of its civiliza-
tion. On the verge of having its foundations shaken to the
core, it thirsts as never before for the true light.

But the most surprising fact in modem spiritual life must
be considered our indifference toward this thirst, our own too
easy consent to the division existing between the Church and
the world. We refuse to recognize that this external division
is supported not only by the “willfulness of the world,” but
also by our own stagnant Christianity. Is not our own double
life an expression of our dual consciousness? Is it not we our-
selves who have helped to reduce the meaning of the life of
the Church to an “intimate little comer” of piety locked away
with seven locks from the life of the world, and hostile to it?
Our religious fervor is opposed not to the sinfulness of the
world, but to the world itself its life, its history, its quests
and questionings. We have thoroughly assimilated and like to
repeat the proposition that Christ is the “judgment of this
world,” this world which has not recognized and accepted
Him, that He is the salvation and the life for all those who
recognize and accept and perform the will of the Father re-
vealing itself in Christ. But for some reason we forget that the
Father enjoined us above all not to judge, but to save the
world. Salvation is the eternal meaning of the Incarnation of
the Word, Christ’s death on the Cross, His Resurrection and
the entrance of the Holy Ghost into the apostles. We forget it
because our personal spiritual makeup has become more

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valuable to us than its objective: the transformation of the
world and of life for the glory of the approaching fullness of
the Kingdom of God.

“We have got used to “owning” our Christianity and keep-
ing it to ourselves, to not sharing it, as if it were an accidental
inheritance. The external division thus becomes fixed in our
Christian consciousness. Both in life and in the conscious-
ness of the self there are, as it were, two persons: one is the
keeper of a spiritual heritage, the other participates in the af-
fairs of the world, which, as a rule, have no relevance to that
heritage. For a long time it was thought that the Church was
victorious in the world. But when that illusion crumbled, the
vanquished Christians continued to harbor feelings of resent-
ment and of a certain humble superiority, and these feelings
imperceptibly commingled with the heritage they were pre-
serving. Sometimes it seems that proud Orthodoxy and an
unshakable feeling of righteousness have become entangled
with this feeling of long-standing, unextinguished and still-
persisting umbrage: “Since the world once disobeyed the
Church, it can go to the devil now, along with its civilization
and culture. . . . We’ll see then. . . .” There is a peculiar,
vengeful delight about the way in which not only the smaller
sects but also Christians of the Church discuss the end of the
world. In this sense Berdyayev e was undoubtedly correct in
writing that the traditional concept of hell and its eternal tor-
tures is an ontologization of Christian vengefulness. But hell
is not a transcendent absolute, it is already present here, in
time, in the postlapsarian world which is “rotting” and suf-
fering for its sinfulness. The world might rather take offense
at the Church for keeping the secret of salvation to itself and
being either unable or unwilling to speak about it in accessi-
ble language.

Our civilization is dual in its foundation and history. And
now, in spite of a secularization that aspires to universal do-
minion, Christian principles continue to influence its life.
The energies of Christian culture, not directly through the
6. See note on page 55 . — Trans.

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Church perhaps, but obliquely and through mysterious chan-
nels, continue to penetrate through to our world. They reveal
themselves to us in the experience of making a moral choice,
in the quest for genuine humanity, in the aspiration for
higher things, in the impossibility of making do with compro-
mises. And here we discover that our culture itself reacts
sharply and painfully to human efforts at self-deification and
self-sufficiency. In the Renaissance this reaction became
the dominant theme in the later works of Botticelli,
Michelangelo and Titian. And it continued in the “religious
renunciation” by the romantics of the ideals of the Enlight-
enment, in the struggle of the twentieth-century Christian
renaissance with positivism and atheism. And Russian litera-
ture — through Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and
Solzhenitsyn — has unfailingly borne witness to the pro-
found malady of our secular culture, to the tragic absurdity of
an existence without God, to man’s indestructible urge to
find the true light. Without breaking through to absolute and
unconditional values, culture inevitably ends by denying it-
self in what might be termed pseudo- or anticulture, in some-
thing which has the external appurtenances of culture but is
essentially false, worthless, and inhuman. This process of
psychologically casting off the dominating idols and tempta-
tions of modem civilization is bringing us back to that spiri-
tual center in which culture first originated. On the basis of
its genuine, though perhaps incomplete, religious experi-
ence, culture is posing many problems of Christianity anew,
trying to find an answer to them in the Church and searching
for support and a dialogue.

But it is precisely at this point that a certain fateful disjoint-
edness of creative rhythms is revealed, for the Church is
deaf to these queries and does not know how to answer them.
Answers exist, they must exist, but how and in what language
should one begin speaking? All the “modernism,” all the
“adaptation” introduced by the Church are in reality nothing
other than manifestations of its profound bondage to secular
culture. This capitulation is not always voluntary and more
often than not is the result of a prolonged siege. And this

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siege can take different forms: in different historical periods,
in different parts of the world and with varying degrees of ac-
tiveness, the Church is opposed in one place by state athe-
ism, in another by the ideology of science, and elsewhere by
totalitarian regimes or the establishment of general material
prosperity and comfort. Strategy and tactics change, but the
result is usually the same: the consciousness of the Church
turns out to be defenseless against hostile pressures. The
Church closes up on itself, hoping to wait out the siege, then
suddenly revolts and hurls anathemas, but ends up by trying
to speak in that alien language imposed from outside. But
how, in those circumstances, is it possible to speak about
things that have been expressed only in the unchangeable
language of Christian Hellenism or medieval scholasticism?
By creating new concepts and a new liturgical language? By
creating a new religious art? But then it is a long time since
the Church seemed once and for all to renounce any desire to
create cultural values or a new language for religious culture
itself. It seemed to have overstrained itself in the period of
its medieval supremacy. And now, in accordance with the
universal principle of freedom of worship, we Christians are
prepared to settle conclusively for our compulsory autonomy.
In the huge and as yet unfinished building of culture, we
have been magnanimously given the use of a comer with
icons and lamps, and we seem to have reconciled ourselves
to this fact. Certain modernists still think that all is not yet
lost: icons can be replaced by a more modem “religious art,
and lamp oil by electricity. And indeed, the possibilities for
renovation and adaptation are not yet exhausted. But would it
not be self-deception to think that the light of the lamp, how-
ever much we cherish it, is that Light for the World that is
destined to transform our whole life and with it the whole
universe?

“The Spirit breathes where He will, and you hear His
voice, ignorant of whence it comes and whither it goes. . . .

But we seem not to concede this mysterious freedom of the
divine call to the world. We want to think that God speaks

SCHISM BETWEEN CHURCH AND WORLD

only through our Church organization, only through our rite,
only through our doctrine and tradition. In this approach the
Church easily becomes an idol. We turn it from a living, eter-
nally growing and eternally developing organism expressing
the unity of man with God into a frozen mechanical form,
capable of receiving into itself only things that can be cut off
and adjusted to it. But the Church is life, not an external
form. Its mission, which we too often forget, is to make ev-
erything that seeks the Light and aspires to the Truth a truly
living and growing part of the Body of Christ.

Today it is particularly important to overcome our enthrall-
ment by pseudoecclesiasticism. Regular attendance at church
or familiarity with the order of the Mass does not at all mean
that only we are necessarily doing good. Our sojourn in the
Church is not in itself a prerogative or patent on salvation.
The secret of individual salvation is known only to God. We
are called by Him to embody Christ’s work in this world and
to work for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. That is
why our life in the Church is above all a task (a command-
ment), the task of achieving greater perfection, of growing in
the fullness of the grace granted to us, and not an advantage
that justifies everything we do. We have, indeed, been given
a great deal, but that only means that still more will be de-
manded of us. Now we can surmise how the Church and Rus-
sia may escape from that terrifying blind alley in which they
find themselves. It is evident that a better future for Russia is
inseparable from Christianity. And if Russia is to have a re-
naissance, it can only be accomplished on a religious founda-
tion. But will the Church have enough strength to start this
renaissance? At the moment it is experiencing a profound
crisis and itself needs a renaissance first. Many people cling
to the vain belief that this is only a crisis of Church govern-
ment, a crisis of power in the Church. In feet we are ex-
periencing something much bigger — a crisis in Church
consciousness itself, in the traditional concept of the con-
gregation. In various conditions and forms this crisis has now
affected the Christianity of the whole world. But the Russian
Orthodox Church is experiencing it in a specific form. Exter-

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nal lack of liberty is paralyzing its life and being internalized,
it is taking root in its consciousness and becoming equated
with Church tradition. And to many people it now seems
unarguable that no creativity is possible, that it is doomed
and most probably unnecessary. All that remains is to await
the resolution of our earthly destinies and curse the bishops.

The most tragic thing of all is that these views are being
taken over from a gutless and confused older generation by
the young people and intelligentsia who are coming into the
Church. It is tragic that they are forgetting and betraying
their experience of spiritual emancipation. Against the back-
ground of their conservatively stylized “old people’s” Ortho-
doxy it is difficult to believe that they have really
experienced the joy of liberty in Christ and have felt the
influx of the power of grace. Looking at them makes one
think that too often conversion to Christianity, to Orthodoxy,
means no more than a change of ideologies. But ideology,
however infallibly true it may seem, is incapable of liberat-
ing man.

Today, as never before, a Christian initiative is needed to
counter the godless humanism which is destroying mankind,
and to prevent humanism from deteriorating into a nonre-
ligious humanism. We are too passive in our attitude to the
world. We do not carry our own religious will within our-
selves, or our care for the world; we seem to have forgotten
that we have been entrusted with the great task of transform-
ing the world. We must begin by prophesying inside the
Church about the genuine foundations for hope offered by
Christianity, and not by restoring or modernizing things that
amount merely to historical or cultural incrustations. We
need new creative efforts, we need a new language. We must
speak of what is beyond modernism and conservatism alike,
of what is eternally living and absolute in this world of the
relative, of what is simultaneously both eternally old and
eternally young. Our historicism must be metahistorical, it
must mean not only a breakthrough into eternity but the
presence of eternity in our own time, metahistory in history.

Christian activism must lead not to a reformation but to a

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transformation of Christian consciousness and life, and
through it to a transformation of the world. Only when we
have entered upon this path shall we be able to answer the
challenge of godlessness to build our world on autonomous
principles. Only then shall we be able to answer the call of
those who are close to the Light, but who are prevented from
communing with it by our own negligence and inertia.

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VADIM BORISOV

There is a widespread, if sometimes inexplicit, feeling
about that Russia has passed her Golgotha and is approaching
some new historic milestone.

But what is this milestone? Is it the beginning of a col-
lapse, of which the growing stream of emigrants would seem
to offer material proof? Or is it the expectation of resur-
rection?

Hope and faith are locked in a struggle with despair and
blind ill will; in the present debate on Russia notes of truly
apocalyptic alarm are increasingly in evidence.

Are we an accursed and corrupt race or a great people? Are
we destined to have a future, or was Russia only created, in
the words of Konstantin Leontyev’s 1 crazed prophecy, to
bring forth from its vitals the Antichrist? What lies ahead — a
yawning abyss or a steep and laborious ascent?

It is a dire symptom in itself that these unmentionable,
taboo, half-forgotten yet everlasting questions occupy the
thoughts and minds of every living being in Russia. Only
when decisive historic changes are in the wind do these

i. Konstantin Leontyev (1831-1891), a conservative thinker who opposed
aristocratic and aesthetic values to the prevailing liberal and Nihilist
theories of his time. He died a monk in the monastery of the Holy Trinity.
—Trans.

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questions pose themselves with such merciless urgency: thus
it was at the beginning of the seventeenth and eighteenth,
the beginning and middle of the nineteenth, and at the
beginning of the twentieth centuries.

The future, as is well known, casts its shadow before it,
and we who live in this shadow, remembering our predeces-
sors’ bitter but profound experience, need to distinguish its
contours. If we hope to maintain a meaningful historical exis-
tence, indeed, we must.

Not so long ago it seemed impossible that the debate about
Russia, after everything she has suffered, should revive. But
present developments offer a glimmer of hope that an end to
peremptory Marxist decisions and predeterminations of Rus-
sia’s fate may now be near and that henceforward her crip-
pled soul and body may themselves begin to seek ways back
to health.

The debate also offers us a warning. The ideological mono-
lith that has weighed for long years on Russian life and
thought has done its work: Russian consciousness is scram-
bling out from under it toward an unknown future which is
fragmented as never before. All the old unresolved dilemmas
of Russian thought are rearing their heads again, intensified,
complicated and distorted by our unprecedented experiences
of the last half century. It is not rhetoric, but cold fact, that
our people’s very life now depends on their solution.

Unless we can discover in ourselves the source of some
power to lead our ravaged consciousness back to a single
spiritual center, all the present enthusiasm for social experi-
ment may turn out to be Russia’s last agony.

ONE

Of all the questions facing us, perhaps the most painful and
contentious is that of Russian national rebirth, its potential,
its principles, its form and direction.

Why the contention?

During recent decades many people have come to under-

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stand a long known but eternally neglected truth: that a
people can perish without being totally annihilated
physically — it is necessary only to remove its memory, its
thought and its word, and the soul of the people will die.
History may observe the numbing spectacle of the dead and
soulless body’s continued growth for a long time afterward,
but eventually it witnesses the predestined collapse . 2

That, it is widely thought today, is the fate in store for the
Russian people.

But no man’s heart, if Russia means any more to him than a
“prison of the peoples,” can remain indifferent to such an
outcome. And this emotion gives rise to attempts, tentative
perhaps, misdirected perhaps as yet, but living attempts to
grope for ways to effect the salvation and rebirth of the na-
tional soul.

Different groups among our present educated class have
different ways of understanding and approaching this already
clearly defined aspiration for national rebirth — from unques-
tioning support for any of its manifestations to total aversion
to the idea itself.

The recent and continuing controvery over A. Solzheni-
tsyn’s “Letter to the Soviet Leaders” has shown up this
specter for all to see.

Exacerbated national feeling among the various peoples of
the Soviet Union is now a fact not to be concealed by
braggart phrases about a “historic new community.” In fact
this community reveals itself as a none too solid ideological
crust which can barely restrain the underground tremors of
forcibly suppressed national energies. But whereas liberal-
democratic circles in our society unfailingly support national
independence movements among, say, the Baltic peoples,
their attitude to similar tendencies in Russia herself is one of
keen suspicion, alienation, fear and unconcealed hostility.

2. A. S. Khomyakov in his polemic with the “progressists” clearly under-
stood that a people “may perfect its knowledge, while its morals decline and
the country perishes; the administration may behave according to the rule
book and therefore appear to be in order, yet the people decline and the
country perishes. A center may fortuitously consolidate itself while all the
limbs are weak and diseased, and the country yet again perish.”

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Everyone knows the immediate historical causes of this ap-
parently paradoxical situation.

The intelligentsia’s unwavering aversion to the false of-
ficial patriotism into which Stalin strove to direct the genuine
national exaltation of the war years (succeeding generations
will forever associate this “patriotism” with the purges of
“cosmopolitans” and arrests of Jews), plus guilt for the Rus-
sification of the fringe republics and hostility to official anti-
Semitism — all this directly motivates the humanist protest
against “Great Russian chauvinism” or — to put it another
way — “nationalism.”

However, a number of publicistic articles in recent years
(by G. Pomerants, 3 R. Medvedev and others) and recently,
unfortunately, the attitude of A. Sakharov, together with per-
sonal contacts with today’s intellectuals, lead me to conclude
that the true extent and purpose of this protest goes much
further and deeper. It has often seemed to me that, with rare
exceptions, these circles regard not just nationalism, as a
specifically defined ideology (of which more later), but any
symptoms of a Russian national psychology and awareness
with skeptical hostility or at best guarded suspicion.

This is a replay of the situation which S. Bulgakov 4 once
defined as typical of Russian prerevolutionary society — “the
moral boycott and auto-boycott of national consciousness.”
The forms are new, of course, but it remains essentially the
same as before. The boycott is nominally intended to defend
the dignity of the human personality.

Our progressive, humanistically inclined intelligentsia
makes no clear distinction in its mind between “national”
and “nationalist,” because it tends to suspect that national
feeling by its very nature is morally inferior and immature.

Despite the fatal blows the twentieth century has dealt to
our faith in man as such and the progressive enlargement of
his rights, this faith for inexplicable and irrational reasons
still remains the basic postulate of the moral consciousness of

3. For a discussion of Pomerants’s writings, see pages 244-246, 259-261,
264-265, 270. — Trans.

4. See note on page 20. — Trans.

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the modem liberal-democratic intelligentsia (I use this con-
ventional term for want of a better one).

Now, as in the past, this faith inspires noble self-sacrifices,
examples of which we can all call to mind.

But that same faith, as we shall see, is what lies at the heart
of the process of denationalization of faithless humanist phi-
losophy, and this reveals its inherent ambiguity and tragic
contradictoriness.

The freedom of individuals and their unification in man-
kind as a whole are the alpha and omega of the humanist phi-
losophy, the formula for the progressive development of the
human race in history and its most rational outcome. The
humanist ideal regards the nation as one of human society’s
transitional forms, which at a certain point (it is deemed to
have arrived already) hinders the achievement of a higher
form of human community and which is in any case inferior
to that shining goal.

Ignoring the nuances, this philosophy, which is usually
couched in socialist terms, is closely related to V. I. Lenin’s
famous dictum: “Socialism’s aim is not only to abolish the
fragmentation of humanity into small states and to end all
distinctions between nations, not only to bring the nations
closer together, but to bring about their fusion.” 6

Liberation from the bonds of nationhood is part of human-
ism’s plan for the emancipation of the human personality.
For this reason any intensification of national feeling, when
not connected with a struggle for freedom from foreign politi-
cal oppression (homegrown oppression is our own!), is
regarded as atavistic reaction fit to be condemned uncondi-
tionally.

From this utterly rationalist point of view, finding the an-
swer to questions about the relationship between the indi-
vidual human personality and the nation and between the

5. Fichte in his early years formulated this striving to throw off the bonds of
nationhood more individualistically and romantically: “Let those bom of the
earth, whose acknowledged fatherland is the cmst of the earth, the rivers
and mountains, remain citizens of the defunct state. . . . But the spirit
whose likeness is the sun is irresistibly drawn and moves toward light and
justice. We may rest serene in that feeling of universal citizenship. . .

PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

nation and mankind presents no difficulty. The human per-
sonality’s susceptibility to national feelings, its conscious af-
firmation of nationality, is demeaning to its dignity,
subjecting its freedom to the dictates of blind tribalism, and
stifling its rational aspirations in the chaos of patrimonial life.
Also, insofar as the historical limitations of the national unit
have been rationally identified and scientifically accounted
for, it follows that any excessive emphasis on it or foolish
clinging to national distinctions at the present time will
hinder the fixture union of mankind and serve the forces of
division and reaction.

I think I am not alone in frequently hearing reproaches and
even severe moral censure addressed to Russian writers (the
nation’s greatest geniuses included) who lack the moral fiber
to overcome this base instinct.®

But is the answer to these painful questions as obvious as
the proponents of rationalist humanism would have us be-
lieve? And why are they so discouragingly certain of their
moral rectitude?

To get to the bottom of this we must take a closer look at
the central concept beloved of all humanists today — the
human personality.

And at once we enter an area of total confusion.

It will be easy enough to receive an exposition of the pre-
cise rights that are due to the individual personality, and we
shall, of course, be reminded of its lofty dignity. But if we
ask, what is the human personality, the definition will proba-
bly be “a sum of psychological qualities,” or words to that
effect

But we are hardly likely to receive a satisfactory answer to

6. Let us here note a characteristic attitude to Russian culture often encoun-
tered among today’s intelligentsia. They can combine love of this culture
and its “highest achievements” with contempt for Russian history, fear of the
“bestiality” of the Russian people, and a half-mocking, half-condescending
view of its spiritual values. They regard these “highest achievements” not as
an organic phenomenon but as an unaccountable anomaly of Russian life.
Evidently they have genuinely lost all understanding and feeling for the in-
divisibility of the individual genius and the genius of the people. Therefore
the apparent contradiction between Russia herself and her spiritual culture
fails to strike them as unnatural.

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the question of why, precisely, must the human personality
have all these rights, why must we acknowledge that one
“sum of psychological qualities” is equal to another? What is
the basis of such an assumption? We shall of course be re-
ferred to “natural justice” and the “social contract” and “it
stands to reason” and “our innate moral consciousness,” and
more of the same, but only by some strange mental aberra-
tion can this be taken seriously as a sound basis for a juridical
concept in the 1970s.

We discover with astonishment that so-called rationalist
humanism actually lacks an adequate rational basis for its
defense of the dignity and inalienable rights of the human
personality — for which it has often risked both life and limb.

The American Founding Fathers who many years ago first
propounded the “eternal rights of man and the citizen” pos-
tulated that every human being bears the form and likeness
of God; he therefore has an absolute value, and consequently
also the right to be respected by his fellows.

Rationalism, positivism and materialism, developing in op-
position to religion, successively destroyed the memory of
this absolute source of human rights. The unconditional
equality of persons before God was replaced by the condi-
tional equality of human individuals before the law.

Deprived of divine authority, the concept of the human
personality could now be defined conditionally, and there-
fore inevitably arbitrarily. The concrete person became a
juridical metaphor, a contentless abstraction, the subject of
legal freedoms and restrictions.

And it is here, in the admission of the conditionality of the
human personality, that we find the root of its calamitous or-
deals in our barbarous world. If the human personality is
conditional, then so are its rights. Conditional too is the rec-
ognition of its dignity, which comes into painful conflict with
surrounding reality.

But conditionality, by its very nature, is neither indestruc-
tible nor eternally binding. A given condition can survive
only insofar as the force which supports it remains in exis-

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tence. Once the force is spent, nothing can logically prevent
us from breaking the condition.

If the human personality is not absolute but conditional,
then the call to respect it is only a pious wish, which we may
obey or disregard. Confronted with a force which demands
disrespect for the personality, rationalist humanism has no
logical arguments with which to refute it.

In breaking the link between the human personality and
the absolute source of its rights, and yet affirming them as
something to be taken for granted, rationalist humanism has
from the very outset been inherently inconsistent, as its more
logical successors very quickly understood. Darwin, Marx,
Nietzsche and Freud (and many others) resolved the incon-
sistency each in his own way, leaving not one stone upon
another in the edifice of blind faith in man’s dignity. They
knocked the human personality off its phantom humanist
pedestal, tore off and ridiculed its mantle of sanctity and in-
violacy, and showed it its true station in life — as the cobble-
stone paving the road for “superman,” or the drop of water
destined with millions of others to irrigate the historical soil
for the happiness of future generations, or the lump of flesh
dragging itself painfully and uncomprehendingly to union
with its fellows.

These men represented the theoretical, logical culmination
of mankind’s humanist rebellion against God. They declared
“our innate moral consciousness” to be self-deception, nox-
ious illusion, fiction — as demanded by a rationally ordered
consciousness.

This century’s totalitarianism, trampling the human per-
sonality and all its rights, rhinocerouslike, underfoot, is only
the application of this theory to life, or humanism put into
practice . 7

Yet oddly enough, despite the logic of humanism’s histori-
cal development, this initial variant of it (defined above as

7. The evolution we have only sketched here has been studied in detail by
Russian thinkers — F. Dostoyevsky, S. Bulgakov, S. Frank, N. Berdyayev,
Fr. Pavel (Florensky) and many others. Their writings are strongly recom-
mended to the interested reader.

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“rationalist humanism”) has not entirely followed this high
road of reason, but has survived practically unchanged on the
sidelines until our own time, representing in fact an archaic
survival from the eighteenth century.

It has maintained its tradition of moral feeling unnaturally
married to atheism of the mind (not of the heart!) while still
believing in the inalienable rights of man as such. But this
utopian humanism refuses to acknowledge its historical af-
finity with the “humanism” which has become a reality. Fur-
thermore, it even joins battle with it for these very rights.

The clash is, by an irony of history, between two ele-
ments — the initial and the final — of one and the same pro-
cess. It is an unequal struggle, with utopian humanism at a
painful disadvantage. As we have already said, it cannot logi-
cally oppose its brutal and consistent younger relative. The
source of its courageous protest is irrational, for it is that very
moral light brought into the world by religion, but “ra-
tionalist humanism” cannot acknowledge this without ceas-
ing to be itself.

Its fete is tragic: it testifies both to the indestructibility of
man’s moral nature and to the hopeless dilemmas in which
he is enmeshed when he overlooks the' religious roots of that
nature. It is precisely because of its atheism that humanism
so often either slips into despair or, denying itself, adopts a
belief in solutions through violence, when the human per-
sonality invariably becomes a tool.

A humane attitude to life (a more precise term than the am-
biguous “humanism”), if it ignores its origins, rests on flimsy,
shifting foundations. As Dostoyevsky once observed, such
unmindful “humaneness is only a habit, a product of civiliza-
tion. It may completely disappear.”

Do we need to quote the examples that have confirmed the
terrible truth of those words a thousandfold?

The vagueness and abstract nature of the humanist concept
of the human personality undermines confidence in its abil-
ity to solve the problem of the relationship between human
personality and the nation. Humanism has forgotten what
the human personality is. And perhaps it has also forgotten

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what a nation is. So should we not in fact discuss the rela-
tionships between the human personality and anything
whatever in the context of the teaching that gave birth to the
very concept of the human personality, namely, Chris-
tianity?

TWO

But here we come up against the inspired objection of the
Apostle Paul: “There is neither Jew nor Greek » .

Many who quote this objection (including A. Krasnov-Levi-
tin in No. 106 of the “Vestnik RSKD” 8 — though there are
few enough who don’t quote it) regard it as so authoritative,
incontrovertible and altogether crushing as to eliminate the
entire question of relations between the human personality
and the nation from the Christian point of view, as if it were
not a question at all, or at any rate one long ago answered.
For Christianity the human personality exists, the nation
does not

We do not propose to quibble with St. Paul, still less to
dispute his authority, for he did write those words. But they
did have a continuation which for some reason is invariably
overlooked by the proponents of Christian “universalism”
(or, to run a little ahead, pseudouniversalism): “. . . neither
male nor female . . .”

Are its proponents bold enough to maintain that Chris-
tianity, with its teachings on marriage, makes no distinction
between the sexes?

Did not the apostle to the heathen rather mean that there is
no difference between Greek and Jew, man and woman,
slave and freeman in one particular respect? He said so
quite explicitly elsewhere: “For the scripture saith, Who-
soever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is
no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same
Lord over all . . (Rom. 10:11-12).

To take the scriptural argument further, have our “univer-
8. See pages 95 to 96 and note on page 96. — Trans.

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salists” ever stopped to consider texts like “ All nations
whom thou hast made . . .” (Psalm 86:9)? Do they re-
member that Christ brought the good news, not to scattered
individuals, but to the people of Israel as a whole? Or
Christ’s words: “Go ye therefore and teach all na-
tions . . .”?

And does this not mean, despite all their disclaimers, that
the “nation problem” does exist for Christianity, and that at-
tempts to discard it (or even morally destroy it) on the basis
of half a dozen imperfectly understood words are, to say the
least, unjustified and premature?

In our atheist age, however, even Christians tend to shy
away from scriptural arguments. This obliges us to transpose
the question into a somewhat — if not altogether — different
plane.

What is a nation? What is the essence of this mysterious
human community at which “universalists” of various kinds
have chanted spells (“abracadabra vanish!”) for a century and
more, but which has obstinately refused to vanish? Is it com-
mon territory? A common economy? Language? Kinship? Or
all of them taken together? Or perhaps something else al-
together?

Dostoyevsky’s notebook contains the following words:
“The nation is nothing more than the national personality.”

He returned to this idea many times, it was one of his most
intimate and penetrating thoughts. He understood the na-
tional personality not metaphorically, not in the abstract, but
precisely as a living personal unity. He saw it as the spiritual
reality that binds all the concrete, historical and empirical
manifestations of national life into a single whole. 9

Well, they will say, Dostoyevsky was a “mystic” and is not
much in demand these days. But:

“A nation is not a collection of different beings, it is an
organized being and moreover a moral personality. A won-
derful secret has been revealed — the great soul of France.”

9. This inspired intuition was philosophically developed in Russian litera-
ture by L. Karsavin, N. Trubetskoy, N. Lossky and others.

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The author of these words was no mystic. It was the
famous historian of the French Revolution, Michelet Rather
than weary the reader with quotations, we ask him to take
our word for it that the same idea, although not always
equally well defined, appears in many spiritually sensitive
people of all ages and all nations, however different their
personal philosophies.

Just one more quotation, then, a very characteristic one
from A. Herzen, the great writer and little understood idol of
the Russian intelligentsia, to whom the mystery of the nation
as a personality was a matter of deep concern:

“It seems to me,” he wrote, “that there is something in
Russian life higher than the community and stronger than the
might of the state; it is hard to capture in words, harder still
to point to with the finger. I mean that inner, not quite con-
scious power which wondrously preserved the Russian peo-
ple under the yoke of the Mongol hordes and the German
bureaucracy, under the Tartar knout from the east and the
corporal’s staves from the west; that inner power which pre-
served the attractive open character and lively wit of our
peasants under the humiliating oppression of serfdom, and
which when commanded by the tsar to educate itself, within
one hundred years replied with the resounding phenomenon
of Pushkin; I mean, finally, that power of self-confidence
which lives on in our breasts. This constant power has pre-
served the Russian people and its unwavering faith in itself,
preserved it outside all forms and against all forms.”

This sense of the nation as a personality, which has been
expressed by individuals, corresponds with and confirms the
people’s awareness of its identity as embodied in folklore. Its
image covertly governs our speech, for when we speak of the
“dignity” of the people, its “duty,” its “sins” or its “responsi-
bility,” we are making concrete, that is to say, unmetaphori-
cal, use of terms that are applicable only to the moral life of a
person.

Finally, the unfathomable mystery of the nation’s ultimate
destiny (here again we shall have to resort to the Holy Scrip-

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tures), the mystery of its indestructibility and autonomy un-
bounded by space and time, in other words the secret of its
metaphysical essence, is revealed in the Apocalypse:

“And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the
light of it [the City of God] and they shall bring the glory and
honor of the nations into it” (Rev. 21 .24 and 26). And, says St.
John the Divine, the disciple whom Jesus loved, this shall
come to pass after the first heaven and the first earth have
passed away.

This concept of the nation as a person cannot be com-
pletely translated into the language of reason and therefore
remains altogether foreign to rationalism and positivism, not
to mention materialism. (That is, specifically, the philos-
ophies, since there are of course exceptions among their ad-
herents.)

However, even those endowed with neither a religious
outlook on life nor any special spiritual sensitivity can to a
certain extent verify the reality of the nation s personality, as
distinct from the empirical manifestations of national life. All
that is required is to examine with care and without preju-
dice (not necessarily to live through at first hand!) the experi-
ences of the Russian emigration throughout the last century

Many Russians have shaken the dust of the hated and des-
potic fatherland off their feet, cursing and denouncing its
monstrous face, and fled to Europe, the land of sacred mira-
cles,” to liberty, equality and fraternity. But very soon, quite
against their expectations and desires, these same Russians
were overcome by a spontaneous sense of some irreparable
loss. The trouble, as many of them understood, was not sim-
ply the result of an unfamiliar environment or a foreign lan-
guage (most of them, after all, knew European languages and
European conditions just as well as their own) but something
else. They gradually came to see the “land of sacred mira-
cles” as an “abomination of desolation,” and their own exis-
tence in it — though often quite comfortable — as illusory
and insubstantial.

And unexpectedly the bond with the motherland, this

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“darkness unmasked,” to use Marina Tsvetayeva’s 10 phrase,
came to be the only thing that mattered, with a direct bearing
on the very essence of their being . 11 They came to realize
that behind the outward appearances of the life of their peo-
ple they had failed to perceive what was most important, the
essence of which Herzen wrote. They had not suspected it
before and only now, in their isolation, could they begin to
divine its real meaning and understand Russia as a personal-
ity, to whom their own personalities were by some mysteri-
ous process indissolubly bound. In their dark homeland
these people suddenly perceived a fount of light, and were
drawn to it irresistibly even when inevitable destruction
stared them in the face.

This is the secret of the spiritual nature of that famous and
mysterious Russian nostalgia, the unaccountable feeling of
having lost some whole whose lack makes man’s life seem in-
complete.

Slavophiles and Westemizers alike were stricken with it,
positivists and mystics, Russian Orthodox and Russian Catho-
lics; it led them to mental instability and often to irretriev-
able breakdown. Russia continues to haunt her outcasts and
fugitives all their lives: it is not the immensity of her plains,
nor the beauty of her “little birch trees” which have now
become something of a joke, nor even any peculiar trait of
the Russian soul, but she herself, her mysterious face which
evidently possesses such fascination.

And it is perhaps because rationalism and materialism held
such comparatively short sway in Russia that this emotion is
so extraordinarily acute among Russian emigres, demon-
strating that their spiritual capacity to be aware of their par-
ticipation in the whole has not altogether atrophied, that they

10. Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941), one of the finest Russian poets of the
twentieth century, emigrated in 1922, but returned to the Soviet Union in
1939 as a result of her husband's return. In 1941 she hanged herself.
—Trans.

11. “Having started with a cry of joy,” writes Herzen of his spiritual experi-
ences, “upon crossing the frontier, I ended with a spiritual return to my
homeland. Faith in Russia saved me when I was on the verge of moral de-
struction. ... I thank my homeland for my faith in her and for the healing it
gave me.”

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are actively conscious of the inclusion of their individual per-
sonalities in a more complex unity — the collective or, to use
the traditional term of Russian thought, “ corporate’ ’ national

personality.

That is what we call the nation.

We have already said that personality in its original sense
is a specifically Christian concept.

It was unknown to the ancient world, whose consciousness
was totally individualistic. The Greeks, for instance, de-
spised all barbarians, and the citizens of Rome despised all
non-Romans.

We have forgotten the Christian origins of our idea of the
“personal” as of something that gives every individual his
qualities of absoluteness, unrepeatability and irreducibility
to other individuals — and this insensibility threatens ulti-
mately to render meaningless the words we all so willingly
use.

We often confuse the concepts of personality and individ-
ual in our speech and use them as if they were synonymous,
but in Christian thought they are poles apart.

This requires some explanation.

In Christian thought the world is not simply the arithmeti-
cal sum of its visible parts, but a definite hierarchy, all of
whose levels are personalized. This applies even to the struc-
ture of the life of the Deity, Whose mystery is embodied in
the triune dogma of the Three Persons of the One God; and it
applies equally to the structure of the life of mankind, inas-
much as “Christianity,” in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa,
“is an imitation of the nature of God.” Christian ideology dis-
tinguishes in God a single nature and its existence in persons
(or personalities). The same distinction lies at the heart of all
Christian anthropology and may in our view also be applica-
ble to the question of the true role and significance of the
“nation as personality” in mankind.

The source of the Christian interpretation of this question
is in two great historical events — the Incarnation and the
Pentecost.

In Christ’s time there were many peoples already existing

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

on earth, occupying various territories, speaking various lan-
guages, and warring with one another. Was their appearance
merely a historical accident? The words of the Bible about
the “nations thou hast made” answer this question in the neg-
ative; the existence of peoples was part of the plan of cre-
ation, forming part of God’s design for the world. In the
course of their history, however, the peoples had lost their
common measure, which Christ then restored to them.

Having assumed the perfect nature of man in the Incarna-
tion, Christ forever confirmed the natural unity of mankind,
once enshrined in the person of the first man, “Old Adam.”

But Christ did not come to do away with the design of the
Creator. He did not become the flesh of history so as to abol-
ish it, but in order to become its spiritual center, its course of
energy and its purpose.

Man’s nature is one — says Christianity — but “all nature
is contained in somebody’s personality and can have no other
existence.” 12 In other words, Christianity introduced to the
world the concept of the plurality of personalities of a single
mankind. Personalities not just individual, but also national.

This concept in particular is symbolized in the events of
the Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost descended on the apos-
tles and they were endowed with the gift of speaking in dif-
ferent tongues. “And they were all amazed and marveled,
saying to one another, behold, are not all these which speak
Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue,
wherein we were bom? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,
and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cap-
padocia, and Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphilia, in
Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers
of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do
hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of
God.”

The Christian Church was bom not in a single world lan-
guage but in the different tongues of the apostles, reaffirming
the plurality of national paths to a single goal.

12. The words of the authoritative theologian of the Eastern Church, Leon-
tius of Byzantium.

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

We can now easily understand the Christian view of the
difference between the personality and the individual and
the new principle contributed to the so-called national ques-
tion by the concept of the nation as personality.

The individual embodies the opposite of the common mea-
sure in mankind, a fragment of the one human nature, self-
sufficient and absolute, consisting of uniform particles
formed from a mingling of nature and personality. Individual
men and individual nations are impenetrable to one another.

The personality, as opposed to the individual, is not a part
of some whole, it comprehends the whole within itself. The
personality is not a fragment of one nature, but embraces the
whole fullness of nature; therefore the idea of personality
presupposes the existence of a common measure in mankind.

(To the contemporary mind these meditations may, indeed
probably do, seem exceedingly abstract and divorced from
the alarming reality of today. But we shall soon see the prac-
tical consequences that follow from forgetting and distorting
these Christian ideas.)

If the nation is a corporate personality endowed with its
being by God, then it cannot be defined as a “historical com-
munity of people” or a “force of nature and history” (Vladi-
mir Solovyov). The nation is a level in the hierarchy of the
Christian cosmos, a part of God’s immutable purpose. Na-
tions are not created by a people’s history. Rather, the na-
tion’s personality realizes itself through that history or, to put
it another way, the people in their history fulfill God’s design
for them.

In this sense the nation is distinct from the empirical peo-
ple. The history of a people chronicles its discovery of its
own personality. There is no concrete moment in the life of a
people that fails to manifest its personality, and conversely,
no historical situation is capable of plumbing the full depths
of its personality.

Different stages of its self-discovery may come into sharp
conflict with one another, as happens in the individual life of
a man; this can lead to terrible declines, but so long as the
people remains aware of its personal unity — and therefore

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

of its freedom — it can ieemerge from even the deepest
gulfs.

The acknowledgment by all members of a national unit of
their personal unity is what we call national consciousness.
It brings together all aspects and empirical manifestations of
a nation’s historical being; its aim, in the words of Vladimir
Solovyov, is to achieve in the destiny and spirit of the people
“what God thinks of it in eternity.” A necessary precondition
of the people’s existence and development is historical mem-
ory. If this is destroyed, the people’s self-awareness suffers
pathological distortion; it comes to identify its personality, to
its own detriment, with the present moment of its existence;
it forgets that all empirical personality is imperfect and that
the fulfillment of personal life can only be achieved by a con-
tinuous and conscious process of development.

The destruction of historical memory kills a people’s spiri-
tual yearning for this fulfillment, cripples its moral personal-
ity, undermines its faith in the possibility of the creative
conquest of evil and its hope of rebirth.

If peoples are recognized as personalities, this leads to rec-
ognition of their equality, giving them all an indisputable
right to be respected and loved by all others, affirming the
absolute value of their national identity.

But how can the freedom of the individual human person-
ality be reconciled with its membership in a national whole?

No man is bom into the world as a creature without per-
sonality, a clean slate. If he is to exercise free self-determina-
tion in his earthly life he must already be, at the moment of
his birth, a qualitatively, and therefore also nationally, de-
fined person. This definition is admittedly only an ideal and
potential one, a metaphysical foundation for our spiritual na-
ture; it does not violate or diminish the gift of human free-
dom. Every person is free to evade the fulfillment of his
personal destiny, free to reject God’s design for him, to forget
the roots of his being; but destroy these roots completely he
cannot

And whatever new characteristics a man may acquire in
the ups and downs of his life, his innermost being and sub-

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

conscious self always preserve some vague idea of his ori-
gins, of his “prototype.” In many people this tends to come
to the surface as an oppressive, restless dissatisfaction with
life, a sense of some unfulfilled vocation.

But another way is always open to every human personal-
ity — the way of self-knowledge, plumbing the depths of
one's own self and the spiritual source of one’s being. On this
path toward God a sense of national awareness sooner or
later comes into its own — an awareness of the individual’s
metaphysical relationship with the corporate self of the peo-
ple, and through it with the corporate self of mankind.

But all these correlations can be considered to be no more
than the theoretical base of Christian consciousness. Real life
is still very far from realizing them. As in the time of the
early Christians, they only show the way by which mankind
may achieve the fulfillment of personal existence.

In Christian terms this higher level of personal being is
called the Church. Mankind as the Church is the fulfillment
of the future, toward which the constantly changing reality of
the existing world must strive so as to become one with its
Creator.

But every personality, individual or national, being
unique, approaches this union in its own way, striving to
achieve fulfillment within itself; only thus is the true whole
fulfilled.

Christianity does not ask mankind to deny the variety of
the personalities composing it, nor to become an amorphous
mass. It urges mankind to transform itself entirely, “unto the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).
Every people, every individual person must achieve his ful-
fillment in the Church. When this comes to. pass, when all
nations have achieved this goal, this will be the perfect ful-
fillment of the corporate personality of mankind — Christ’s
Church, in which the nations’ spiritual experience, their
“glory and honor,” will be laid at Christ’s feet.

“All nations whom Thou hast made shall come and wor-
ship before Thee, O Lord; and shall glorify Thy name.”

This is mankind’s free and common purpose.

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THREE

The destruction of the Christian base of the nation could
not but have disastrous consequences for its later history.

That is not to say, of course, that it was not sick even in its
Christian context — sometimes with abstract pseudouniver-
salism, sometimes with religious nationalism. These distor-
tions in practice often caused suffering to numerous human
victims, and it would be intolerable hypocrisy for Chris-
tianity to try to duck its historical responsibility for it.

However, the degeneration of national awareness started
in earnest with the spread of atheism, rationalism, positivism
and materialism.

As the result of this degeneration there arose two atheist
ideologies (in the broadest sense) — universalism and na-
tionalism.

Both are worldwide in their scope, both have appeared in
past Russian history and still exert a powerful influence on its
course.

We touched briefly on the former while expounding the
“rationalist humanist” view of the national question. Now we
can take a different and wider view of this ideology so as to
evaluate its real significance and the role which, whatever
the subjective intentions of its proponents, it has played in
Russian history and may play in the history of mankind.

The beginning of the collapse of Russia’s integral, Chris-
tian national awareness was unusually stormy, thanks to the
brutal reforms of Peter the Great, the first Russian Nihilist.
For reasons of space we cannot here go into details of this
process, which led to the agonizing bisection of the national
personality; we only sketch in the rough outline.

How did it happen that the “educated class” and the “peo-
ple” in Russia came to be opposed to one another? What
were the origins of the notorious problems of the “in-
telligentsia and the people,” regarded as one of the most
characteristic traits of recent Russian history?

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

This problem is sometimes oversimplified as the unscrupu-
lous “disengagement” of the intelligentsia from the people,
as if it were a deliberate act. This oversimplification, how-
ever, ignores the entire tragedy of a dichotomy of which Rus-
sian writers from Dostoyevsky — nay, from Pushkin — to
Blok 13 have always been keenly aware.

For many Russians this “disengagement” took place sub-
consciously and at first they were not subjectively aware of it
at all. They lost their faith in God while at the same time re-
taining their love of the “people” and often an altruistic de-
sire to “serve” it.

But in their minds, without realizing it, they substituted
the social image of the people for the face of the people —
since the people as a whole cannot be comprehended ra-
tionalistically and materialistically. Then they were faced
with the fatal question (which could only be asked at all
when the national personality was sick): who in Russia is to
be regarded as the people ? Naturally enough, in an agricul-
tural country like Russia, it was mainly the peasantry who
came to be called the “people.”

And it was to the peasantry that the intelligentsia decided
to communicate their idea of “progress,” “enlightenment,”
and the “universal” social forms that had developed in West-
ern Europe . 14

But it was precisely the “people” that proved to be most
unreceptive to this salutary universal ideal, and it was in con-
tact with them that the intelligentsia felt most “foreign” in its
own country. Suddenly the intelligentsia saw the Russian
people as no more than a “reactionary mass,” clinging stub-
bornly to their superstitions and loath to acquire the fruits of
European enlightenment.

“Progressive” Russian society swung to the belief that the
Russian “people,” in Nietzsche’s celebrated expression, was
“something to be overcome” — for its own good, of course.

13. See note 7 on page 156. — Trans.

14. “The task of the educated class in Russia is to be the bearer of civiliza-
tion to the people.” I. S. Turgenev’s words were quoted approvingly as far
back as 1910 by the Cadet leader P. N. Milyukov in his attack on die Vekhi
version of the intelligentsia’s history.

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

That was the beginning of a process that in a revised form
is still going on — the “salvation” of Russia from herselfj sal-
vation through the renunciation of her national personality
and the acquisition of “universal” features . 15

With the increasing fragmentation of Russian society, the
concept of the “people” in liberal and populist thought be-
came attenuated , 16 until at length it degenerated into Marx-
ism with its theory of class hatred.

Adopting a platform of hostility on principle to the concept
of a national community, taking the sociological abstraction
of “class” to be the only reality, inscribing its banners with
the slogan “the proletariat has no fatherland,” Marxism
became the consistent and pure embodiment of national ni-
hilism.

It was not its progenitor, however; it undertook merely to
finish the job of depersonalizing the people started by Rus-
sian “progressive circles” long before . 17 Its inspiration, like
theirs, was the idea of “building in the desert” (Pisarev’s 18
expression) and it detested, as they did, the “idols” which
had for centuries defined the moral nature of the Russian
people, enabling it to distinguish between “good” and “evil”
and preserving its self-awareness as a personality.

15. “The masses, like nature,” wrote the Westemist historian T. Granovsky
in the 1840s, “are either senselessly cruel or senselessly kind. They stagnate
under the burden of historical and natural factors from which only the indi-
vidual personality frees itself through thought. This breaking down of the
masses by thought constitutes the process of history.”

16. Typical was the Russian press debate over the events of 3 April 1878 in
Moscow, when the butchers of Okhotny Ryad savagely beat up the partici-
pants in a student demonstration. Publicists argued loud and long about
whether the butchers could be regarded as “the people.”

17. Here is how M. V. Tugan-Baranovsky, the Russian socialist intelligen-
tsia's theoretician, defined that intelligentsia at the beginning of this cen-
tury. What mattered in an intellectual of this type was that “he was
permeated with revolutionary spirit and had the greatest disgust for Russian
historical traditions, regarding himself in this respect as an out and out ren-
egade. ... As for traditional Russian culture . . . hostility to it is the most
typical mark of the intellectual. . • . The Russian intellectual is uprooted
from his historical soil and consequently selects the social ideal which
seems best from the rationalist point of view. This is the socialist ideal —
cosmopolitan, supranational and suprahistorical.”

18. See note 4 on page 156 .— Trans.

PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

In order to destroy and supplant those “idols,” Marxism in
Russia undertook a campaign “to overcome” the people the
like of which world history had never seen.

A “new historic community of people” was to rise from the
“ethnic masses” of the former Russian Empire, but first they
had to be “transformed.” How this “transformation” was
brought about, first and foremost with regard to the Russian
people, is now well enough known.

Within a short time the Russian people had been brought
to a state of almost total ignorance of their own history, de-
prived of their national culture, almost deprived of their re-
viled and persecuted Church, which survived by a miracle,
and became, as the transformers had intended, a reliable
buttress of the present and future international.

All Europe of the Left, where the processes of “dena-
tionalization” and “internationalization” were also taking
their course, applauded and still applauds this outstanding
success of the “Russian Marxists.” Now it too is beginning to
fear it is lagging behind the country of progressive socialism,
and is urging and goading its own governments to catch up.

The “teachers” of the West and the “disciples” of the East
have changed places.

“Western Europe” has lost its monopoly as a measure of
the “universal,” a role which is increasingly being taken over
by socialist Eastern Europe. (In the real East, meanwhile, a
new and awesome claimant for this role is emerging into the
open — Communist China, which already overshadows ear-
lier idols in the eyes of the European “New Left.”)

The universal human ideal was conclusively and scien-
tifically defined in the slogan of “socialist integration,”
which was held to apply in principle to the whole of man-
kind. It is true that Western adherents of this concept still
tend to be shocked by what they call the “Asiatic” traits of
socialism as at present practiced, but this merely shows that
their minds are still “weighed down by the nightmare of the
past” (Marx), in this case the traditions of the national democ-
racies.

This exchange of roles between the “enlightened” West

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

and the East with its “centuries of stagnating in savagery”
has led to some confusion and muddle in the camp of the de-
fenders of socialist “denationalization.” Western radicals
were extremely upset, and then openly annoyed, by what
they saw as the “retrograde” movement in the USSR for
democratic rights, for “living standards approaching those of
the West” (A. Sakharov), against which the main thrust of
their own opposition is (openly or secretly) directed. Increas-
ingly the leftist press counterattacks in an attempt to neutral-
ize the unfortunate (for it) impact of demands for legality in
the socialist countries. Accusations made against “dissenters”
in the Soviet Union range from ones of “naivete” to “reaction-
ary” — and from their own point of view the Western radi-
cals, striving for socialism, are of course right.

Their freedoms are stale and dilapidated, they do not know
what to do with them; they are tired of seeing “no signs on
earth or in heaven” (Jean-Paul Sartre), tired of their desper-
ate isolation in the world. And to save them from all this
they need an ideological faith: as a prop for their existence,
as a nostrum for a better tomorrow, as a basis for struggle. In
the name of this faith and for the sake of dissolving their own
chaotic will in the purposeful will of the masses, they are
prepared to give up this excessively heavy burden of con-
tentless freedom and the limitless rights of the free per-
sonality.

Therefore when voices are heard in the countries where
the idea has come to pass defending these same rights and
threatening to undermine their ideological faith, they prefer
not to believe them. This disbelief of like-minded circles in
the West deepens the Russian liberal democrats’ mood of
suicidal pessimism, despair and confusion. These moods may
eventually lead to a thorough reappraisal of our intelligent-
sia’s philosophical first principles (for some it is already
beginning). For the moment, however, they are still domi-
nated by the urge to reorganize the life of mankind on ratio-
nal principles with the aid of science and technology, and
committed to the convergence of East and West in order to
bring it about. And still, of course, they condemn the growth

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

of national awareness as an obstacle of the normal advance of
universal progress.

Great as are the differences between today’s socialists,
they share a faith in the progress of universal social forms, in
the advance of human societies toward a mechanical fusion,
toward a higher level of existence. All varieties of socialism
claim to be scientifically based, whether on Marxism or on
some more contemporary scientific-rationalist approach.

Nevertheless, despite its pretensions to science, socialism
is no more than faith in the ultimate triumph of reason on
earth. How else could “progressive philosophy” have sur-
vived in the face of the monstrous, catastrophic evils and suf-
fering that mankind has endured during the twentieth
century and that should have put an end forever to all “scien-
tific” attempts at rebuilding the world? Since man appears to
have reached the ultimate in bestiality this century, we must
ask the question: what is it that is developing progressively?
It should be formulated as a question about human nature,
about the instinct of evil in man and the conditions in which
it comes to the surface.

Some part of mankind has certainly been devoting much
frantic and unhappy thought to this subject.

But nothing of the kind has happened among the sup-
porters (at least the majority of them) of the theory of prog-
ress. Faith, as one would expect, has proved stronger than
the facts. And mankind, flying into the inferno, is once again
being soothed by the lullaby of progress.

Now, however, after all that mankind has experienced, the
jarring notes in the lullaby can scarcely fail to be heard. We
are told that nothing irreparable has happened; it is simply
that “progress” has zigzagged and deviated from the straight
and narrow way by the will of “evil leaders” and — need one
say — “imperialists.” But now that the “evil leaders” are
dead and the imperialists in their last agony, everything will
be all right ... In any case, why worry? “Marxism, like any
other science, had the right to make an experiment” — so
wrote the Russian “liberal” Marxist Roy Medvedev in 1974.

Some of the defenders of the theory of progress are, how-

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

ever, people of great moral sensibility who admit that an
uninterrupted march toward technological perfection may
have fatal consequences for mankind. Among them is the
world-famous, courageous defender of human rights, Acade-
mician A. Sakharov. How does he propose to avoid this men-
ace? In his opinion, “conditions for the scientific and
democratic regulation of economic and social life on a world-
wide scale” must be created. “Progress must be continually
and purposefully adapting its forms so as to supply human so-
ciety’s needs, and above all preserve nature and the earth for
our descendants.” This assumes that in conditions of democ-
racy “human society’s needs” will automatically become ra-
tional, and that these conditions will probably be created
(since A. Sakharov is an implacable enemy of violence) by
the “goodwill” of governments, economic necessity, and a
recognition of impending dangers. Power will no doubt be
expected to pass from the professional politicians to the sci-
entists and administrators, who will tailor progress into the
requisite form.

But what is the goal of mankind? What requirements must
progress meet? What guarantees are there that men will dis-
play reason and goodwill?

Since A. Sakharov answers none of these questions, his ed-
ifice takes on an abstract and formal character . 19

The unsavory history of the twentieth century has convinc-
ingly demonstrated that even the most progressive of the
democracies are helpless to control human malice armed
with the products of progress (as the survivors of Hiroshima
will testify). At best democracy expresses the opinion of the
majority, but this by no means proves that the majority is
right.

What does this leave us with? Science, perhaps?

This century has reposed, and still reposes, great hopes in

19. “If progress is the goal,” wrote Herzen, “for whom are we working?
Who is this Moloch who retreats backward as the laborers approach instead
of paying them their just due, and has no answer for the masses who are soon
to perish but the sarcastic promise that after their death all will be well on
earth? Surely you would not sentence the people of today to the pitiful fete
of caryatids?”

1

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

science. “Science has become a social institution” is the
unanimous refrain of all kinds of theorists of modem indus-
trial society. Science raises the material standard of living,
science gives us mass production, science puts an end to
voluntarism in society, science eliminates the erstwhile
chaos of history and opens up a new era of “planned,” “posi-
tive” history for mankind, and so forth and so on. The task of
science is to create a strictly ordered and stable whole out of
mankind of a universal “scientist” type. This society’s cul-
ture, permeated with the “scientific spirit,” should be radi-
cally different from what was previously understood by the
word “culture.”

Jean Fourastier, a prominent theorist of the “scientific soci-
ety,” gives a striking description of this new culture. Accord-
ing to Fourastier, this society will create a completely
different concept of the personality, adapted to the spirit of
modem times. It will be characterized by an antitraditionalist
cast of mind, the absence of historical memory which would
hinder a “sterile” perception of reality, antiemotionalism, so-
briety, matter-of-factness. Mass consumption means a change
in people’s methods of communication. Henceforth man will
impinge on his environment “apropos of things, and not ap-
ropos of questions such as “is the world organized justly?”
Everything that cannot be measured, everything that cannot
be computed, in a word, everything qualitative must be ex-
punged from the new culture. A new moral climate will reign
in the new consumer society, whose main distinguishing fea-
ture will be empiricism, corresponding to the empiricism of
contemporary science. Morality will be loosened and freed
from dogma; the atmosphere of modernity “carefully elimi-
nates difficult and painful questions from moral conscious-
ness.” All this, according to Fourastier, helps “scientific”
principles to penetrate the minds of the masses and betokens
the intellectual “liberation” of the personality. But this “lib-
eration” is not the expansion of freedom in the traditional
sense, it is its precise opposite. The new “personality,” freed
of the weight of tradition and the “stereotypes” of former
life-styles, must correspond as closely as possible to the regu-

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latory function of science, that is, its behavior must be totally
subordinated to the demands of rationality, optimalism and
efficiency — in the noneconomic sphere as well as in the
production process, since no sphere of the new society will
remain indifferent to production. “The technological envi-
ronment demands . . . that man should live ever closer to
the optimum; all deviation from the optimum is now
regarded as disorder, whereas traditional society was more
tolerant.” The socioregulatory functions of science are car-
ried out by the technocracy. “Technocracy is power exer-
cised on behalf of the demands of . . . growth and size,
which regards society merely as an aggregate of the social
resources designed to be utilized in order to achieve the
goals of growth and reinforcement of the apparatus which
controls it.” (The utopian socialist Saint-Simon, Fourastier’s
compatriot, once wrote: “The supreme law of human reason
subjects everything to itself, rules everything; in its view
people are only tools”) This projected society would of
course have to be worldwide and “universal.” The develop-
ment, concentration and rational distribution of science pos-
tulate the disintegration of traditional national structures and
the liquidation of “historic” cultures incompatible with the
“scientific” cast of mind. The greatest obstacle to the creation
of the “society of the future” is, in Fourastiers view, the
“magical, synthesizing and metaphorical way of thought”
among the mass of the people. “The masses and progress,”
he says, “are a contradiction in terms.” (Let us recall that the
people is “something to be overcome.”) 20
It needs no great penetration to see the resemblance be-
tween this picture and the ideal toward which contemporary
Marxism strives — “the socialist reconstruction of the
world.” The latter merely maintains that this ideal cannot be
fulfilled under capitalism. From the Marxist viewpoint the
blueprint of the new “personality” as envisaged by the
theorists of the “scientific” society must also suffer from one

20. During the 1960s Fourastier concluded that the twentieth century’s so-
ciopolitical experimentation and scientific experimentation were manifesta-
tions of one and the same antitraditionalist spirit of the New Age.

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

other vital flaw, namely, the lack of an ideological compo-
nent, which experience has shown to be of far from negligi-
ble utility in exercising the “regulatory” function and which,
happily, does not come into conflict with the “scientific
spirit,” since, as is well known, Marxist ideology differs from
“traditional” ideologies precisely in that it is the “only scien-
tific” one. Correspondingly, society requires the regulator of
a scientific ideology, which would in effect squeeze out the
politically naive technocracy.

The thinly veiled “convergence” of socialism and “tech-
nologism,” which is now becoming increasingly visible, is
not fortuitous and rests on their as yet not fully acknowledged
spiritual affinity. Scylla and Charybdis will always find a
common language for negotiations, because they both share a
common nature and — more important — a common enemy.

What is the name of this enemy?

The prophets of the new universal society never speak it
aloud, perhaps because many of them are still vague about it,
but perhaps also because pronouncing it openly would mean
that their cause was lost All the same . . .

As we have seen, the “new society” envisages the disap-
pearance of the personality in the traditional sense of that
word, as we explained above. Its place is to be taken by the
sterile “universal man,” deprived of all qualitative defini-
tion, a rational atom with rationally planned social behavior.

We have seen that the “new society” strives to eliminate
all former “nonoptimal” types of human society — the nation
first and foremost — that hinder the worldwide regulation of
the life of “mankind.” (The abolition of religion and “magical
thought,” as the chief sources of irrational experience, is
taken for granted.)

And so that the radiant field of reason shall never be
darkened by distressing recollections of these dispensable
things, the “new society” intends to destroy historical mem-
ory and make history nonexistent.

We have here a well-thought-out plan for the destruction
of the hierarchy of the Christian cosmos, a plan to turn man-
kind into an amorphous mass.

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

But an impersonal, unstructured, formless existence is im-
possible. Deprived of these qualities it destroys itself and
turns into nonexistence.

“The spirit of self-destruction and nonexistence” — that is
the name of the real driving force and regulator of “universal
progress” without God or man, that is what lies concealed
beneath the handsome exterior of “universalism,” jeering
mercilessly at the “universal men” it has tricked. Throughout
history it has masqueraded under a variety of names, always
doing its work of destruction; often it has been recognized
and forced to disguise itself again, for its mighty opponent is
life itself. In Russia it was recognized and named by Do-
stoyevsky, but progressive society would not believe him,
preferring to label his prescience “reaction,” and this dis-
belief has cost Russia dear.

It has cost the rest of the world dear too, which has had its
own prophets; but they, if they were not stoned, were consid-
ered at best eccentric lunatics and were not taken seriously.

Now all the prophecies have come true. The edifice that
took centuries to build on “rational foundations” proved a
useless and damnable dwelling. The “temple of society”
(Milyukov’s 21 expression), to the horror of its architects, be-
came a place of mass human sacrifice, equipped with torture
chambers to the greater glory of the Future. It emerged that
this laborious process of construction had its own aims, quite
different from the ostentatious plans of the constructors, who
were no more than unconscious, passive tools for the fulfill-
ment of an aim they knew nothing of — the aim of destroying
man and the foundations of his human existence.

That is the real price mankind is obliged to pay — and
which it has to some extent paid already — for its abstract,
mechanical unity. This fact is being increasingly clearly re-
alized by twentieth-century religious, artistic and philo-
sophical thinkers. However, opportunities for the
dissemination and assimilation of their arguments are limited

21. Pavel Milyukov (1859-1943), eminent historian and leader of the main
democratic political party at the time of the revolution, the Constitutional
Democrats. Emigrated in 1920. — Trans.

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

both from without (by both overt and covert methods of sup-
pression) and even more so from within, for reasons inherent
in contemporary man himself. They bog down in the welter
of preconceived stereotypes which in modem man pass for
intelligence, stereotypes that are reinforced hourly by all the
mass media.

The vast majority of people live in the grip of a tortured yet
infantile optimism which quickly swings into paroxysms of
fear, but snaps back to its former condition even more
quickly. There is no more dangerous mistake than to confuse
this will-less, thoughtless, irresponsible “optimism” with
man’s irrepressible thirst for life. An opposite law is at work
here, as ancient as that of self-preservation. The law of the
self-destruction of life works in disguise, cunningly, but no
less destructively for that.

But it is not an impersonal force, not some mighty Fate that
rules man independently or against his will. It can act only
when the personality consents to subject itself to it, only by
its free choice. Even if many people of our century insist on
their right not to be personalities, to deny their freedom and
their consequent responsibility for events, this does not alter
the situation: it merely shows that they have already suc-
cumbed to that law, already consented to the final destruc-
tion of their being.

Universalism’s rationalist utopia, based on irrational faith
in progress, is not just a harmless aberration that can be over-
come by reason. It is the product of the collapse of an in-
tegrated self-awareness of the personality, the result of its
renunciation of the true roots of all existence, the symptom of
a dangerous spiritual sickness which ultimately leads to its
destruction. The fulfillment of this utopia does not raise the
standard of existence, as its adherents believe, but lowers it,
bringing disintegration and finally destruction.

FOUR

Attempts under the banner of internationalism to bring this

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

destructive abstraction to fruition in history have always led
to the mutilation and dislocation of living reality and brought
about equally fearsome reactions.

We refer to the phenomenon known as nationalism , whose
origins have not as yet been fully explained.

It is of course wrong to maintain that nationalism is a reflex
that arises solely when national life threatens to disintegrate,
although this is what most of its adherents say. This would
mean that it has no existence of its own, except as a reflection
of some other phenomenon, and must disappear when the
conditions that gave rise to it no longer exist.

But it is a well enough known historical fact that national-
ism exists in countries which are under no external or inter-
nal threat; nobody will have any difficulty in calling
examples to mind. Threats to national existence and national
humiliation in any form exacerbate nationalist feelings, but at
such times their particular nature is practically indistin-
guishable in the universal national exaltation.

Only when life returns to normal do its own features be-
come more or less distinct.

Nationalism must not be identified with national feeling,
as so often happens. The latter is its tool, no more. National-
ism is above all an ideology, which directs the existing elemen-
tal national instincts into a particular channel.

This ideology starts from the concept of the exclusive
value of the tribal characteristics of a given race, and the doc-
trine of its superiority to all others.

The same concept, in the form of egotistical national in-
stincts, also existed of course in the pre-Christian world; it
contributed to the distortion of national awareness in the
Christian era; but it became an ideology only when the prin-
ciples of Christianity started to crumble and be forgotten.

We discussed in some detail above how Christianity
regards mankind as single in nature, but plural in personal-
ity, with every personality having an absolute value.

Like universalism, nationalism distorts this relationship by
denying the absoluteness of every national personality; but it
has its own way of getting there.

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

Unlike rationalist or materialist universalism, nationalism
does its utmost to maintain the concept of a national commu-
nity that cannot be disrupted by sociological factors. But hav-
ing lost the suprasociological Christian concept of this
community as a personality, it is forced to seek it, not above,
but beneath the sociological surface of national life. And na-
tionalism finds this community in the nation’s ties of blood
and kinship, and places this racially naturalistic perception at
the heart of its ideology.

All the traits of the national personality as manifested in
the people’s history, or rather the traits which for whatever
reason appear most desirable to the proponents of the nation-
alist philosophy, are held to be derived from this racial factor
by its very nature. It is scarcely necessary to enlarge on the
idea that this set of “natural” traits is always historically lim-
ited and therefore arbitrary. One need only recall the fate of
the theory, formerly widely held in Russia, that autocracy
and Orthodoxy were the external attributes of Russian na-
tionality and together with it formed an indissoluble triune
principle. Or the once no less popular conviction that serf-
dom was an inalienable national characteristic of the Russian
people (this belief of the old Russian nationalists is often met
with even today, in an updated form, in the West and in Rus-
sia herself).

Nationalism confuses the concepts of personality and na-
ture, ascribing to nature the attributes of personality. As a
result, the absoluteness of national personalities is trans-
mogrified into the absoluteness of national natures, that is,
the single nature of mankind is made to disintegrate into a
multiplicity of private natures, while the personality is
forced into an alien role as the means of this disintegration.

Thus mankind becomes a mechanical aggregation of na-
tional individuals or units that are totally connected inter-
nally, sharing no common measure and maintaining purely
external relations with one another.

Nationalism is therefore an individualistic, antipersonal
mode of awareness. A man’s or nation’s awareness of his or
its personality is always grounded in an awareness of the per-

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

sonality of all others, in an acknowledgment of the absolute
value of any personality.

The nationalist acknowledges such value only in the nation
in whose bosom he happened to be bom; he regards other
nations either as tools or as obstacles to his nation’s fulfill-
ment of its own ends. Introverted nationalism, therefore,
knows of no moral principles that might limit its claims, but
only of an external force that hinders their satisfaction.

Hence the cult of force of one’s own state that is so remark-
ably typical for nationalist ideologies.

Another most important principle of this ideology is con-
cern for the inner condition of the nation, interpreted in a
very narrow sense. Insofar as nationalism, as has already
been pointed out, believes a people to be endowed with its
particular characteristics by its very nature, it insists on bio-
logical purity for the preservation of the national type. If a
nation declines, nationalism tends to blame the decline on an
adulteration of this “purity”; conversely, if a national renais-
sance is to be achieved, purity must be reestablished.

These two symbols — racial purity and state power — are
for nationalists the essential and sufficient conditions of so-
called national well-being. All other factors of national life —
religion, culture, political system — are subordinate to these
primary conditions, but they are not fundamental to the exis-
tence of the nation, which is declared to be an end in itself.

However dissimilar universalism and atheist nationalism
may appear to be on the surface, however great their hatred
of one another, they have a great deal in common that does
not immediately meet the eye.

These philosophies are distinct from one another not quali-
tatively, but only quantitatively. Nationalism pursues the
same goals as universalism, only within the framework of a
national state. Universalism calls for love of men and man-
kind as such, nationalism calls for love of the men of a partic-
ular tribe and the tribe itself as such.

This similarity of two apparently contradictory phenomena
was once penetratingly remarked on by the Russian thinker
Konstantin Leontyev:

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PERSONALITY AND NATIONAL AWARENESS

“To love a tribe as a tribe is to exaggerate and deceive.
. . . The purely tribal concept contains nothing germinal,
nothing creative; it is nothing but a private perversion of the
cosmopolitanist idea of universal equality and sterile univer-
sal happiness. . . . The national principle without religion
. . . is a principle of slow but sure destruction.”

We would like to end this essay as we began it. Russia has
reached some unrecognized historic milestone. Today we all
have the responsibility of restoring her national awareness,
which is still fragmented and dispersed. The greatest respon-
sibility rests with the Christians, who not only can but must
participate in this essential spiritual work. The humiliated
and deafened Russian people needs as never before to be-
come aware of itself as a personality, freely choosing its his-
torical path.

Christians today are called upon to assist it to recall its
spiritual roots in history, but before doing so they need to
recall it themselves.

This article is an attempt to remind them of it. As the Rus-
sian philosopher said: “We were destined to give the world
vivid examples of the lunacy to which the spirit of present-
day enlightenment can bring people — but we also have a
duty to discover the strongest possible antidote to this spirit.”

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ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

ONE

The fateful peculiarities of the educated stratum of Rus-
sians before the revolution were thoroughly analyzed in
Vekhi (Landmarks ) 1 — and indignantly repudiated by the
entire intelligentsia and by all political parties from the Con-
stitutional Democrats to the Bolsheviks. The prophetic depth
of Vekhi failed (as its authors knew it would fail) to arouse
the sympathies of the Russian reading public; it had no influ-
ence on the development of the situation in Russia and was
unable to avert the disastrous events which followed. Before
long the very title of the book, exploited by another group of
writers with narrowly political interests and low standards
(Smena Vekh — New Bearings), was to grow blurred and dim
and to disappear entirely from the memory of new genera-
tions of educated Russians, as the book itself inevitably dis-
appeared from official Soviet libraries. But even after sixty
years its testimony has not lost its brightness: Vekhi today
still seems to us to have been a vision of the future. And our
only cause for rejoicing is that now, after sixty years, the stra-
1. See Introduction, pages v-vi. — Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

turn of Russian society able to lend its support to the book ap-
pears to be deepening.

We read Vekhi today with a dual awareness, for the ulcers
we are shown seem to belong not just to an era that is past
history, but in many respects to our own times as well. That
is why it is almost impossible to begin talking about today’s
intelligentsia (a problematical term which for the moment, in
this first part, we shall take as referring to “that mass of peo-
ple who call themselves by this name,” and an intellec-
tual — an “intelligent” — “any person who demands that he
be regarded as such”), without drawing a comparison be-
tween its present attributes and the conclusions of Vekhi.
Historical hindsight always offers a better understanding.

However, being in no way obliged to preserve the compre-
hensive structure of Vekhi’ s analysis, we shall for the limited
purposes of the present survey take the liberty of summariz-
ing and regrouping Vekhi ’ s conclusions into the following
four categories:

(1) Faults of the old intelligentsia which were important
in the context of Russian history but which today have either
faded away, or still exist in a much weaker form, or have
become diametrically reversed:

Clannish, unnatural disengagement from the general life of
the nation. (Today there is a considerable feeling of involve-
ment by virtue of the intelligentsia’s employed status.) In-
tense opposition to the state as a matter of principle. (Today
it is only in its private thoughts and among small circles of
friends that the intelligentsia draws a distinction between its
own interests and those of the state, delights in any failure on
the part of the state and passively sympathizes with any show
of resistance; in all else it is the loyal servant of the state.) In-
dividual moral cowardice in the face of “public opinion,”
mental mediocrity at the individual level. (Now far out-
stripped by total cowardice when confronted by the will of
the state.) Love of egalitarian justice, the social good and the
material well-being of the people, which paralyzed its love of
and interest in the truth; the “temptation of the Grand In-
quisitor”: let the truth perish if people will be the happier for

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THE SMATTERERS

it. (Nowadays it has no such broad concerns. Nowadays it is
“let the truth perish if by paying that price I can preserve
myself and my family.”) Infatuation with the intelligentsia’s
general credo; ideological intolerance of any other; hatred as
a passionate ethical impulse. (All this bursting passion has
now disappeared.) Fanaticism that made the intelligentsia
deaf to the voice of life. (Nowadays: accommodation and ad-
aptation to practical considerations.) There was no word
more unpopular with the intelligentsia than “humility.”
(Now they have humbled themselves to the point of servil-
ity.) Daydreaming, a naive idealism, an inadequate sense of
reality. (Today they have a sober, utilitarian understanding of
it.) A nihilistic attitude to labor. (Extinct.) Unfitness for prac-
tical work. (Fitness.) A strenuous, unanimous atheism which
uncritically accepted the competence of science to decide
even matters of religion — once and for all and of course
negatively; dogmatic idolatry of man and mankind; the re-
placement of religion by a faith in scientific progress. (The
atheism has abated in intensity, but is still as widespread
among the mass of the educated stratum; by now it has grown
traditional and insipid, though unconditional obeisance is
still made to scientific progress and the notion that “man is
the measure of all things.”) Mental inertia; the feebleness of
autonomous intellectual activity and even hostility to au-
tonomous spiritual claims. (Today, on the contrary, there are
some educated people who make up for their withdrawal
from public passion, faith and action by indulging at their
leisure, in their closed shell and among their circle of
friends, in quite intensive intellectual activity, although
usually with no relevance to the outside world — sometimes
by way of anonymous, secret appearances in samizdat.)

In the main Vekhi was critical of the intelligentsia and set
down those of its vices and inadequacies that were a danger
to progress in Russia. It contains no separate analysis of the
virtues of the intelligentsia. Yet looking at Vekhi compara-
tively from an angle of vision that enables us to take account
of the qualities of the educated stratum of the present time,
we find that, among its faults, the authors of Vekhi also list

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THE SMATTERERS

features which today cannot be viewed otherwise than as

(2) Virtues of the prerevolutionary intelligentsia:

A universal search for an integral world view, a thirst for
faith (albeit secular), and an urge to subordinate one’s life to
this faith. (Nothing comparable exists today, only tired cyni-
cism.) Social compunction, a sense of guilt with regard to the
people. (Nowadays the opposite is widely felt: that the peo-
ple is guilty toward the intelligentsia and will not repent.)
Moral judgments and moral considerations occupy an excep-
tional position in the soul of the Russian intellectual: all
thought of himself is egoism; his personal interests and very
existence must be unconditionally subordinated to service to
society; puritanism, personal asceticism, total selflessness,
even abhorrence and fear of personal wealth as a burden and
a temptation. (None of this relates to us — we are quite the
reverse!) A fanatical willingness to sacrifice oneself — even an
active quest for such sacrifice; although this path is trodden
by only a handful of individuals, it is nevertheless the obliga-
tory and only worthy ideal aspired to by all. (This is unrecog-
nizable, this is not us! All that remains in common is the
word “intelligentsia,” which has survived through force of
habit.)

The Russian intelligentsia cannot have been so base if
Vekhi could apply such lofty criteria in its criticism of it. This
will strike us even more forcibly when we look at the group
of characteristics depicted by Vekhi as

(3) Faults at the time, which in our topsy-turvy world of
today have the appearance almost of virtues:

The aim of universal equality, in whose interests the indi-
vidual must be prepared to curtail his higher needs. The psy-
chology of heroic ecstasy, reinforced by state persecution;
parties are popular in proportion to their degree of fearless-
ness. (Today the persecution is crueler and more systematic,
and induces depression instead of ecstasy.) A personal sense
of martyrdom and a compulsion to confess; almost a death
wish. (The desire now is for self-preservation.) The heroic in-
tellectual is not content with the modest role of worker and
dreams of being the savior of mankind or at least of the Rus-

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sian people. Exaltation, an irrational mood of elation, intox-
ication with struggle. He is convinced that the only course
open to him is social struggle and the destruction of society
in its existing form. (Nothing of the kind! The only possible
course is subservience, sufferance, and the hope of mercy.)

But we have not lost all of our spiritual heritage. We too
are recognizably there.

(4) Faults inherited in the present day :

Lack of sympathetic interest in the history of our home-
land, no feeling of blood relationship with its history. Insuf-
ficient sense of historical reality. This is why the
intelligentsia lives in expectation of a social miracle (in
those days they did a great deal to bring it about; now they
make it less and less possible for the miracle to happen —
but hope for it all the same!). All that is bad is the result of
outward disorganization and consequently all that is needed
are external reforms. Autocracy is responsible for everything
that is happening, therefore the intellectual is relieved of all
personal responsibility and personal guilt. An exaggerated
awareness of their rights. Pretentiousness, posturing, the hy-
pocrisy of constant recourse to “principles” — to rigid
abstract arguments. An overweening insistence on the op-
position between themselves and the “philistines.” Spiritual
arrogance. The religion of self-deification — the intelligent-
sia sees its existence as providential for the country.

This all tallies so perfectly that it needs no comment.

Let us add a dash of Dostoyevsky (from The Diary of a
Writer):

Faintheartedness. A tendency to jump to pessimistic con-
clusions.

And many more qualities of the old intelligentsia would
have survived in the present one if the intelligentsia itself
had remained in existence.

TWO

The Intelligentsia! How far does it reach, where do its

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THE SMATTERERS

boundaries lie? The term is the one that Russians most love
to argue over, yet it is used in widely differing ways and its
very vagueness tends to diminish the value of any conclu-
sions reached. The writers of Vekhi defined the intelligentsia
not in terms of the level or nature of its members’ education
but according to their ideology, as if it were a sort of new,
religionless, humanist order. Clearly they did not regard en-
gineers or scholars in the mathematical and technical fields
as part of the intelligentsia. Nor the military intelligentsia.
Nor the clergy. However, neither did the intelligentsia itself
at that time, the intelligentsia proper (humanistic, political
and revolutionary) regard all these people as a part of itself.
Indeed, Vekhi implies, and in the writings of Vekhi ’ s dis-
ciples 2 the implication becomes a firmly rooted convic-
tion, that the greatest Russian writers and philosophers
— Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov — did not
belong to the intelligentsia eitherl To the modem reader this
sounds preposterous, and yet it was so in its day and the gulf
was quite a deep one. What people prized in Gogol was his
denunciation of the state system and the ruling classes. But
the moment he embarked upon the spiritual quest that was
dearest of all to him he was flayed by the journalistic press
and excommunicated from progressive society. Tolstoy was
prized for the same sort of denunciations and also for his ani-
mosity toward the Church and toward higher philosophy and
creation. But his insistent moralizing, his summonses to the
simple life, to nonresistance to evil and to universal goodness
met with a condescending reception. The “reactionary” Do-
stoyevsky was altogether detested by the intelligentsia. He
would have been trampled underfoot and forgotten in Rus-
sia — and would not be quoted at every turn today — had he
not suddenly surfaced in the twentieth century to thunderous
worldwide fame in the respected West.

Meanwhile, what about all those people who fell outside
the intelligentsia proper — where were they to be fitted in?
After all, they had their own characteristic features which

a. For example: The Russian Religious Renaissance in the Twentieth Cen-
tury by N. Zernov.

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THE SMATTERERS

were sometimes quite different from Vekhi’s specifications.
The technical intelligentsia, for example, possessed only a
small proportion of the characteristics outlined in Vekhi. It
was not at all disengaged from the life of the nation, nor op-
posed to the state, nor fanatical, nor revolutionary, nor
guided by hatred, nor possessed of a poor grasp of reality,
and so forth and so on.

If we take the etymological definition of the word in-
telligentsia from its root, intellegere — that is, “to under-
stand, to know, to think, to have an idea about
something” — then, clearly, it would embrace a class of peo-
ple differing in many respects from those who, in Russia at
the turn of the century, styled themselves thus and were
viewed as such in Vekhi.

G. Fedotov 3 wittily suggested that the intelligentsia
should be defined as a specific group of people “united by
the idealism of their aims and the unsoundness of their
ideals.”

V. Dal 4 defined the intelligentsia as “the educated, intel-
lectually developed part of the population,” but remarked
thoughtfully that “we have no word for moral education ,” for
that process of enlightenment which “educates both the
mind and the heart.”

There have been attempts to construct a definition of the
intelligentsia on the basis of its spontaneous creative energy,
regardless of external circumstances; on the basis of its non-
imitative mode of thought; and on the basis of its indepen-
dent spiritual vitality. The chief difficulty dogging all these
searches has lain not in an inability to formulate a definition,
or to characterize an actually existing social group, but in a
disparity of desires: who would we like to see included in the
name intelligentsia?

Berdyayev 8 was later to suggest an alternative definition to

3. G. Fedotov, originally a historian and member of the Russian Social Dem-
ocratic party, turned to religion after the revolution and in 1925 was allowed
to go abroad. He subsequently became a professor of theology. — Trans.

4. The great Russian lexicographer (1801-1872) who composed the first
comprehensive dictionary of the Russian language. — Trans.

5. See note on page 55. — Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

that discussed in Vekhi: he saw the intelligentsia as the ag-
gregate of Russia’s spiritually elect. That is, as a spiritual
elite, and not a social stratum.

After the 1905-1907 revolution a gradual polarization of the
intelligentsia began to take place: the interests of the
younger, student generation took a new turn, and slowly an
initially very narrow stratum emerged, attaching a height-
ened importance to the inner, moral life of man instead of to
outward social transformations. So the authors of Vekhi were
not entirely alone in the Russia of their day. But this fragile,
silent process of the emergence of a new type of intelligent-
sia (in the wake of which the term itself would have splin-
tered and acquired a more exact meaning) was fated not to
reach completion in Russia: it was caught up and crushed in
the toils of the First World War and then by the dizzy onrush
of revolution. The word “intelligentsia” was more often on
the lips of the Russian educated class than many others, but
in the course of events it never did acquire a definitive
meaning.

Since then there has been even less opportunity and time.
The year 1917 marked the ideological collapse of the revo-
lutionary-humanist” intelligentsia, as it used to describe it-
self. For the first time it had to shift from isolated acts of
terror, from its conceited cliquishness, from its received party
dogmatism and from its unbridled public criticism of the gov-
ernment to taking real political action. And fully in accor-
dance with the melancholy forecasts of the Vekhi writers
(and, independently, of S. Bulgakov: ® “the intelligentsia, in
league with our ‘Mongols’ . . . will be the ruin of Russia ),
the intelligentsia proved incapable of taking that action,
quailed, and was lost in confusion; its party leaders readily
abdicated the power and leadership which had seemed so
desirable from a distance; and power, like a ball of fire, was
tossed from hand to hand until it came into hands which
caught it and were sufficiently hardened to withstand its
white heat (they also, incidentally, belonged to the in-
telligentsia, but to a special part of it). The intelligentsia had
6 . See note on page 20. — Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

succeeded in rocking Russia with a cosmic explosion, but
was unable to handle the debris. (Later, surveying the situa-
tion from abroad, the intelligentsia formulated excuses for it-
self: “the people,” it turned out; “was not up to scratch,”
“the people had disappointed the expectations of the in-
telligentsia.” But this was precisely what Vekhi had diag-
nosed: that the intelligentsia was deifying a people whom it
did not know and from whom it was hopelessly estrangedl
Ignorance, however, is no excuse. Ignorant of the people and
its own political capacities, the intelligentsia should have
been ten times more careful of taking the people’s and its
own name in vain.

And just as the poker in the fable, carelessly stepped on in
the dark hut, struck the simpleton on the forehead with sev-
enfold force, so the revolution treated the intelligentsia
which had awakened it. After the tsarist bureaucracy, police,
nobility and clergy had been dealt with, the next murderous
blow caught the intelligentsia as early as 1918-1920, while
the revolution was still young, and brought with it not only
firing squads and jails, but also cold, hunger, hard labor and
mocking contempt. The intelligentsia, in its heroic ecstasy,
was unprepared for all this and (which it would never have
expected of itself) drifted into the civil war in part under the
protection of the former tsarist generals, and then into ex-
ile — not for the first time in some cases, though now the in-
tellectuals were all mixed up with those same bureaucrats
whom they had until recently been blowing up with bombs.

Life abroad, although much harder in its everyday aspects
than it had been in the old Russia they so detested, did at
least grant the remnants of the Russian intelligentsia a few
more decades for excuses, explanations and reflection. The
larger section of the intelligentsia — the part that remained
in the Soviet Union — was not destined to enjoy such free-
dom. Those who survived the civil war no longer had the lat-
itude of thought and expression with which they had
previously been pampered. Threatened by the GPU 7 and

7. GPU: acronym for “State Political Administration” (a euphemism for the
secret police), introduced in 1922 to replace the older name of Cheka (an ab-

*37

THE SMATTERERS

unemployment, they were obliged by the end of the 1920s
either to adopt the official ideology and pretend it was sin-
cerely held and cherished, or else face ruin and dispersal.
Those were harsh years when the steadfastness of spirit of
both individuals and the masses was put to the test, a test
that was applied not only to the intelligentsia, but, for ex-
ample, to the Russian Church as well. It could even be said
that the Church, which was utterly decrepit and demoralized
on the eve of the revolution and possibly one of the chief
culprits of Russia’s decline, passed the test of the twenties
with far greater merit: it too had traitors and timeservers in
its midst (the “reformists”), * * * * * * 8 but it also brought forth a mass
of martyr-priests whose steadfastness was intensified by per-
secution and who were driven at bayonet point into the
camps. Admittedly the Soviet regime was far more merciless
toward the Church, while the intelligentsia was titillated
with a stream of temptations: the temptation to understand
the great Natural Order, to acknowledge the newly arrived
iron Necessity as the long-awaited Freedom, to acknowledge
it for themselves today — the thumps of their sincere hearts
forestalling tomorrow’s kicks from the escort guards or the
death sentences handed out by the public prosecutors; the
temptation not to turn sour as part of that “putrefying in-
telligentsia,” 9 but to submerge their “I” in the Natural
Order, to gulp down that hot draft of proletarian air, and to
totter off in pursuit of the Progressive Class as it marched
away into the radiant fiiture. And for those who caught up,
there was a second temptation: to apply their intellect to the

breviation of the Russian for “Extraordinary Commission”). Later in 1922

the name was changed to OGPU (“United State Political Administration”),

then in 1934 to NKVD (“People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs”), in

1943 to NKGB (“People’s Commissariat for State Security”), in 1946 to MGB

(“Ministry of State Security”) and finally in 1953 to KGB (“Committee for

State Security”), its present designation. — Trans.

8. A reference to members of the so-called Living Church group, who ad-
vocated collaboration between the Orthodox Church and the Revolutionary
Government in the early twenties. They were heavily infiltrated by the se-
cret police. — Trans.

9. A phrase of Lenin’s. — Trans.

238

THE SMATTERERS

Unprecedented Creation of a new society, the like of which
world history had never seen. How could they fail to fell for
itl This fervent self-persuasion was the physical salvation of
many intellectuals and it even seemed to have saved them
from spiritual collapse, for they gave themselves up to their
new faith in all sincerity and entirely of their own free will.
(And for long afterward they towered — in literature, art, and
the humanities — like veritable tree trunks, and only time’s
weathering disclosed that they were merely hollow bark and
had no pith.) There were some who went into this “chase”
after the Progressive Class hypocritically and laughing at
themselves, for they had already realized the significance of
what was happening and simply wanted to save their skins.
Paradoxically, though (and the process is repeating itself in
the West today), the majority went into it in complete sincer-
ity, in a hypnotic trance, having willingly let themselves be
hypnotized. The intoxication of the rising generation of
young members of the intelligentsia reinforced the process:
the truths of triumphant Marxism appeared fiery-winged, and
for two whole decades, right up to the Second World War, we
were borne along on those wings. (As if it were an apocry-
phal story I still recall the autumn of 1941, when the fires of
deathly war were ablaze and I was trying for the nth time —
and as unsuccessfully as ever — to fathom the wisdom of
Das Kapital.)

In the 1920s and 1930s the composition of the old in-
telligentsia, as it formerly understood and viewed itself un-
derwent intensive change and expansion.

The first natural extension was of the technical intelligent-
sia (the “specialists”). However, this technical intelligentsia,
with its firm professional footing, its tangible links with na-
tional industry, its conscience clear of the sin of complicity in
the atrocities of revolution, and therefore under no compul-
sion to weave a passionate justification of the New Order or
to curry favor with it — this technical intelligentsia displayed
fer greater spiritual resilience in the twenties than did the
nonscientific intelligentsia, was in less of a hurry to accept

239

THE SMATTERERS

the new Ideology as the only possible world view, and, more-
over, because of the independent nature of its work, was able
to hold out physically as well.

But there were other ways in which the old intelligentsia
expanded — and disintegrated — and these processes were
confidently controlled by the state. One was the physical in-
terruption of the intelligentsia’s family traditions: the chil-
dren of members of the intelligentsia had virtually no right of
entry to establishments of higher education (only personal
submission and regeneration through the Komsomol 10
opened the door). Another was the hasty creation of the
“workers’ faculty” intelligentsia, poorly trained and hence a
“red-hot” proletarian-Communist infusion. A third way was
the mass arrests of “wreckers.” 11 This blow hit the technical
intelligentsia hardest of all: it crushed a small minority and
left the rest frightened to death. In what was by then a coun-
trywide atmosphere of general intimidation, the Shakhty 12
and “Industrial party” 18 trials, and a few other smaller-scale
trials, speedily achieved their aim. By the beginning of the
thirties the technical intelligentsia too had been reduced to a
state of total submission, and during the thirties it too was
well schooled in treachery: it learned to vote obediently at
meetings for whatever penalties were demanded; when one
brother was annihilated, another brother would dutifully step
into his shoes, even to take upon himself the leadership of
the Academy of Sciences; and by this time there was no mili-
tary order that the Bussian intelligentsia would have dared
regard as amoral or would not have rushed promptly and
obsequiously to execute . 14 This blow struck not only at the

10. See note on page 123. — Trans.

11. See note on page 117. — Trans.

12. At the Shakhty trial, held in the summer of 1928, fifty-three engineers
were accused of “wrecking,” or industrial sabotage, in the Donbas coal-
field. — Trans.

13. The “Industrial party” trial was a sequel to the Shakhty trial and the
climax of the campaign against the engineers. The eight defendants were
said to have built up a secret organization covering the entire country. All
eight were shot. — Trans.

14. This feverish zeal for carrying out the orders of the state was portrayed
with great frankness in a recent samizdat publication, Tupolevskaya

240

THE SMATTERERS

old intelligentsia, but soon affected part of the workers’ fac-
ulty intelligentsia as well: it selected its victims on the prin-
ciple of their refusal to obey, and in this way bent the
remaining masses ever more into submission. A fourth pro-
cess consisted of “normal” Soviet replenishments of the in-
telligentsia with people who had received their entire
fourteen years of education under the Soviet regime and
whose genetic links did not go beyond it.

In the thirties the intelligentsia underwent yet another ex-
pansion, this time on a vast scale: by state design and abetted
by the passivity of the public consciousness, millions of state
employees joined its ranks, or, to be more accurate, the entire
intelligentsia was assigned to the class of employees — for
that was the only way one described or styled oneself at the
time, whether one was filling in forms or being issued with
bread-ration cards. All this strict regimentation drove the in-
telligentsia into the class of functionaries and officialdom,
and the very word “intelligentsia” was abandoned and used
almost exclusively as a term of abuse. (Even members of the
free professions, through their “creative unions,” were re-
duced to the status of employees. Since then the intelligent-
sia has continued to exist in this sharply expanded form, in
this distorted sense and with a reduced level of self-
awareness. By the time the word “intelligentsia” was partly
rehabilitated after the war it encompassed many extra mil-
lions of petit-bourgeois functionaries performing any kind of
clerical or modest mental work.

In the prewar years the party and state leaders, the ruling
class, had insisted on maintaining an entirely separate iden-
tity from both the “functionaries” (for they had remained
“workers”) and even more from the putrefied “intelligen-
tsia,” and as “blue-blooded” proletarians had carefully fenced
themselves off. After the war, however, particularly in the
1950s and even more so in the 1960s, when “proletarian” ter-
minology flagged in its turn and became increasingly “So-
viet,” and leading members of the intelligentsia on the other

Sharaga (The Tupolev Special Laboratory ), which reveals that even the most
prominent persons were not immune to it

241

THE SMATTERERS

hand were increasingly allowed to occupy high-level posts as
the technological requirements for all forms of management
grew, the ruling class also allowed itself to be referred to as
“the intelligentsia” (a development reflected in the modem
definition of the intelligentsia in the Large Soviet En-
cyclopedia), and the “intelligentsia” obediently accepted this
expansion too.

It was thought as monstrous before the revolution to call a
priest an intellectual as it is natural now for the same word to
be applied to the party agitator and political instructor.

So, having failed to reach a precise definition of the in-
telligentsia, it would appear that we no longer need one.
What is understood by the word in Russia today is the whole
of the educated stratum, every person who has been to
school above the seventh grade.

In Dal’s dictionary the word obrazovat’ as opposed to the
word prosveshchat’ is defined as meaning: “to give merely
an outward polish.”

Although the polish we have acquired is rather third-rate,
it will be entirely in the spirit of the Russian language and
will probably convey the right sense if we refer to this “pol-
ished” or “schooled” stratum, all those who nowadays falsely
or rashly style themselves “the intelligentsia,” as the obrazo-
vanshchina — the semieducated estate — the “smatterers.”

THREE

And so it has come to pass, and there is no arguing with
history: they have driven us among the smatterers and
drowned us in them (but we let ourselves be driven and
drowned). There is no arguing with history; but in our hearts
we protest and disagree: things cannot possibly stay the same
as they are! Be it because of our memories of the past or our
hopes for the future — we are different!

One Altayev (a pseudonym for the author of an article en-
titled “The Dual Consciousness of the Intelligentsia and
Pseudoculture” which appeared in No. 97 of the Vestnik

242

THE SMATTERERS

RSKD ), 18 while acknowledging that the intelligentsia has in-
creased in numbers and has dissolved in and become one
with the bureaucracy, still seeks a touchstone for separating
it from the dissolving mass. He finds it in a “generic feature”
of the intelligentsia which, he claims, distinguished it before
the revolution and stil does so today, so that it can be ac-
cepted as a “definition” of it: the intelligentsia is “a unique
category of people” which has never been duplicated in any
other country and which lives with a “sense of its collective
alienation” from “its own land, its own people and its own
state regime.” But leaving aside the artificiality of this defini-
tion (and the not so very “uniqueness” of the situation) it
could be argued that a sense of alienation from its own peo-
ple was precisely what the prerevolutionary intelligentsia (as
defined by Vekhi) did not feel — on the contrary, it was con-
fident of its plenipotence to speak in the name of the people;
and the modem intelligentsia is in no respect alienated from
the modem state: those who feel that way, either in their
private thoughts or among their immediate circle of friends,
with a sense of constriction, depression, doom and resigna-
tion, are not only maintaining the state by their daily activi-
ties as members of the intelligentsia, but are accepting and
fulfilling an even more terrible condition laid down by the
state: participation with their soul in the common, compul-
sory lie. How much further could they go? One could per-
haps surrender only one’s body, one’s brain, or one’s
expertise and still remain “alienated” — but not if one sur-
renders one’s soul! The old intelligentsia really was opposed
to the state, and its opposition went as far as an open split
and even an explosion — for that is what it came to —
whereas our present-day intelligentsia, as that same Altayev,
contradicting himself, writes, “has not dared to speak out
under Soviet power, not only because it has not been al-
lowed to do so, but first and foremost because it has had
nothing to say. Communism was its own offspring ... in-
cluding even the idea of terror. ... It was conscious of no
principles that were essentially different from the principles
15. See pages 95 and 96 and note on page 96.— Trans.

243

THE SMATTERERS

implemented by the Communist regime.” The intelligentsia
is itself “an accessory to evil and to crime, and this, more
than anything else, is what prevents it from raising its head.”
(And eased its entry into the system of lies.) Albeit in a some-
what unexpected form, the intelligentsia in fact got exactly
what it had spent many decades trying to achieve — and sub-
mitted without a struggle. And the one solace it has been
able to suck on surreptitiously since has been that ‘‘the ideas
of revolution were good, but were perverted.” And at each
turn in history it has comforted itself with the hope that the
regime was beginning to mend, that a change for the better
was just around the comer and that then, at last, collaboration
with the authorities would be fully vindicated (Altayev sums
it up with his brilliantly polished six temptations of the Rus-
sian intelligentsia: revolutionary, new-directionary, socialis-
tic, patriotic, “thawistic” and technocratic, all arising
consecutively and then continuing to coexist at any given
moment in the present).

We submitted all right, abasing ourselves utterly and an-
nihilating ourselves spiritually, so what in all fairness can we
call ourselves other than smatterers? A melancholy aware-
ness of our alienation from the state (since the 1940s only), of
our helpless captivity in the grip of alien paws — this is not a
generic feature inherited from the past, but the genesis of a
new protest, the genesis of repentance. And the vast majority
of the intelligentsia is by now fully aware — some uneasily,
some indifferently and some arrogantly — of their present
alienation from the people .

The problem of how to avoid being engulfed by the smat-
terers, how to keep a distance from them and preserve the
concept of an intelligentsia, has been much discussed by
G. Pomerants (this is not a pseudonym; Pomerants is a real
person, an orientalist who has published a whole volume of
philosophical essays and polemical articles in samizdat):
“the healthiest section of modem society • . . you will find
no other stratum so progressive.” 16 But he too is thrown into

16. Most of the quotations from Pomerants on this and following pages are
taken from his articles “The Man from Nowhere” and “Quadrillion.

244

THE SMATTERERS

confusion by this ocean of smatterers: “The concept of an in-
telligentsia is one that is very hard to define. The intelligent-
sia has not yet settled into a stable entity.” (Not settled into a
stable entity, a hundred and thirty years after Belinsky and
Granovsky? 17 No, after the shock of revolution.) He is
obliged to single out “the best part of the intelligentsia,”
which is “not even a thin layer but a handful of people; . . .
only a small core of the intelligentsia is an intelligentsia in
the proper sense of the word, ... a narrow circle of people
capable of independently rediscovering cultural treasures
and values.” He even writes: “belonging to the intelligentsia
is a process.” He suggests that we cease trying to delineate
the contours, boundaries and limits of the intelligentsia and
instead imagine a kind of field of force, as in physics: there is
a center of radiation (the tiny handful), then a “stratum of the
animate intelligentsia,” and finally, furthest from the center,
the “inanimate intelligentsia” (?), a stratum which is, how-
ever, “more mature than the philistines.” (In earlier variants
of the same samizdat article Pomerants divided the in-
telligentsia into the “honorable” and the “dishonorable,”
which he defined rather strangely as follows: “the honorable
ones play dirty tricks on their neighbors only when com-
pelled to, and take no pleasure in it,” while the dishonorable
ones, so he says, enjoy doing it, and that’s the difference be-
tween them!)

True, Pomerants rises to the defense of this multimillion-
strong class on the borderline between “inanimateness” and
“philistinism” and writes with great feeling about the hard
life of schoolteachers, general practitioners and book-
keepers — “the white-collar laborers.” But his vigorous de-
fense turns out to be more of an attack on “the people,”
showing that the man whose job it is to scan the payroll for

17. Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848) was Russia’s first great literary critic, a
supporter of Pushkin, Gogol and Lermontov (often for the wrong reasons)
and the founder of a vigorous radical school of literary criticism. Timofei
Granovsky (1813-1855) was a professor of history at Moscow University, a
leading liberal and the spiritual father of the “Westemizers,” a group of
thinkers who advocated the introduction of West European political and
social institutions into Russia. — Trans.

245

THE SMATTERERS

mistakes has a harder time than the collective farm girl who
works in a stinking hen house.

That labor has been distorted and people maimed is cer-
tainly true. I myself, having spent a fair amount of time work-
ing as a schoolteacher, can passionately endorse these words
and add many more categories to the list: construction engi-
neers, agricultural technicians, agronomists, and so on.
Schoolteachers are so harassed, hard-pressed and degraded,
and live in such penury, that they have no time, scope or
freedom left to form their own opinions about anything or
even to seek and imbibe any spiritual food that has not al-
ready been contaminated. And it is not because of their na-
ture or the poorness of their education that these benighted
provincial masses lag so far behind in “animateness” in com-
parison with the privileged university intellectuals of the
capital, but precisely because of their penury and social de-
privation.

But none of this alters the hopeless picture of a bloated
army of smatterers to which the standard certificate of entry
is the most average sort of schooling.

FOUR

It is all very well to charge the working class at the present
time with being excessively law-abiding, uninterested in the
spiritual life, immersed in philistinism and totally preoc-
cupied with material concerns — getting an apartment, buy-
ing tasteless furniture (the only kind in the shops), playing
cards and dominoes or watching television and getting
drunk — but have the smatterers, even in the capital, risen
all that much higher? Dearer furniture, higher-quality con-
certs, and cognac instead of vodka? But it watches the same
hockey matches on television. On the fringes of smatterdom
an obsession with wage-levels may be essential to survival,
but at its resplendent center (in sixteen republican capitals
and a handful of closed towns) it is disgusting to see all ideas
and convictions subordinated to the mercenary pursuit of

246

THE SMATTERERS

bigger and better salaries, titles, positions, apartments, villas,
cars (Pomerants: “A dinner service is compensation for lost
nerves”), and — even more — trips abroadl (Wouldn’t this
have amazed the prerevolutionary intelligentsia! It needs ex-
plaining: new impressions, a gay time, the good life, an ex-
pense account in foreign currency, the chance to buy gaudy
rags. . . . For this reason I think even the sorriest member of
the prerevolutionary intelligentsia would refuse to shake
hands with the most illustrious of our metropolitan smat-
terers today.) But what distinguishes the mentality of the
Moscow smatterers more than anything else is their greed for
awards, prizes and titles for beyond the reach of the working
class or the provincial smatterers — the prize money is
higher, and what resounding titles they are: “People’s Artist
(Actor, etc.) . . . Meritorious Practitioner . . . Laureate . . .”!
For all this people are not ashamed to toe the line punctili-
ously, break off all unapproved friendships, carry out all the
wishes of their superiors and condemn any one of their col-
leagues either in writing or from a public platform, or simply
by refusing to shake his hand, if the party committee orders
them to.

If all these are the qualities of the intelligentsia, who are
the philistines?

People whose names we used to read not so long ago on
our cinema screens and who passed for members of the in-
telligentsia if anyone did, who recently left this country for
good, saw no shame in taking eighteenth-century escritoires
to pieces (the export of antiques is prohibited), nailing the
pieces to some ordinary planks of wood to make grotesque
“furniture,” and exporting them in that form. Can one still
bring oneself to utter the word “intelligentsia”? It is only a
customs regulation that prevents icons older than the seven-
teenth century from leaving the country. Whole exhibitions
of later icons are at this very moment being staged in
Europe — and not only the state has been selling
abroad. • • •

Everybody who lives in our country pays dues for the
maintenance of the obligatory ideological lie. But for the

247

THE SMATTERERS

working class, and all the more so for the peasantry, the dues
are minimal, especially now that the financial loans which
used to be extorted annually have been abolished (it was the
fake voluntariness of these loans that was so perfidious and
so distressing: the money could have been appropriated by
some other means); all they now have to do is vote every so
often at some general meeting where absenteeism is not
checked with particular thoroughness. Our state bailiffs and
ideological inculcators, on the other hand, sincerely believe
in their Ideology, many of them having devoted themselves
to it out of long years of inertia or ignorance, or because of
man’s psychological quirk of liking to have a philosophy of
life that matches his basic work.

But what of our central smatterers? Perfectly well aware of
the shabbiness and flabbiness of the party lie and ridiculing
it among themselves, they yet cynically repeat the lie with
their very next breath, issuing “wrathful” protests and news-
paper articles in ringing, rhetorical tones, and expanding and
reinforcing it by their eloquence and style 1 Where did Or-
well light upon his doublethink, what was his model if not
the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1930s and 1940s? And since
that time this doublethink has been worked up to perfection
and become a permanent part of our lives.

Oh, we era \e freedom, we denounce (in a whisper) anyone
who ventures to doubt the desirability and necessity of total
freedom in our country. (Meaning, in all probability, not free-
dom for everyone but certainly for the central smatterers.
Pomerants, in a letter to the twenty-third Party Congress,
proposes setting up an association of the “nucleus of the in-
telligentsia,” which would have a free press at its disposal
and be a theoretical center giving advice to the administra-
tive and party centers.) But we are waiting for this freedom to
fall into our lap like some unexpected miracle, without any
effort on our part, while we ourselves do nothing to win this
freedom. Never mind the old traditions of supporting people
in political trouble, feeding the fugitive, sheltering the pass-
less or the homeless (we might lose our state-controlled
jobs) — the central smatterers labor day after day, conscien-

248

THE SMATTERERS

tiously and sometimes even with talent, to strengthen our
common prison. And even for this they will not allow them-
selves to be blamed! A multitude of excuses has been
primed, pondered and prepared. Tripping up a colleague or
publishing lies in a newspaper statement is resourcefully jus-
tified by the perpetrator and unanimously accepted by his as-
sociates: If I (he) hadn’t done it, they would have sacked me
(him) from my (his) job and appointed somebody worse! So
in order to maintain the principle of what is good and for the
benefit of all, it is natural that every day you will find your-
self obliged to harm the few (“honorable men play dirty
tricks on their neighbors only when they have to”). But the
few are themselves guilty: why did they flaunt themselves so
indiscreetly in front of the bosses, without a thought for the
collective? Or why did they hide their questionnaires from
the personnel department and thus lay the entire collective
open to attack? Chelnov (in the Vestnik RSKD, No. 97) wit-
tily describes the intelligentsia’s position as standing crook-
edly — “from which position the vertical seems a ridiculous
posture.”

But the chief justifying argument is: childrenl In the free
of this argument everyone falls silent: for who has the right to
sacrifice the material welfare of his children for the sake of an
abstract principle of truth?! That the moral health of their
children is more precious than their careers does not even
enter the parents’ heads, so impoverished have they them-
selves become. And it is reasonable that their children
should grow up the same: pragmatists right from their school
days, first-year students already resigned to the lie of the po-
litical education class, already shrewdly weighing their most
profitable way into the competitive world of science. Theirs
is a generation that has experienced no real persecution, but
how cautious it is! And those few youths — the hope of Rus-
sia — who turn and look truth in the face are usually cursed
and even persecuted by their infuriated, affluent parents.

And you cannot excuse the central smatterers, as you could
the peasants in former times, by saying that they were scat-
tered about the provinces, knew nothing of events in general

249

THE SMATTERERS

and were suppressed on the local level. Throughout die
years of Soviet power the intelligentsia has been well
enough informed, has known what was going on in the
world, and could have known what was going on in its own
country, but it looked away and feebly surrendered in every
organization and every office, indifferent to the common
cause. For decade after decade, of course, it has been held in
an unprecedented stranglehold (people in the West will
never be able to imagine it until their turn comes). People of
dynamic initiative, responsive to all forms of public and pri-
vate assistance, have been stifled by oppression and fear, and
public assistance itself has been soiled by a hypocritical
state-run imitation. Finally, they have been placed in a situa-
tion where there appears to be no third choice: if a colleague
is being hounded no one dares to remain neutral — at the
slightest evasion he himself will be hounded too. But there is
still a way out for people, even in this situation, and that is to
let themselves be hounded! Let my children grow up on a
crust of bread, so long as they are honestl If the intelligentsia
were like this, it would be invincible.

There is also a special category of distinguished people
whose names have become so firmly and inviolably es-
tablished and who are so protectively cloaked in national and
sometimes international fame that, in the post-Stalin period
at least, they are well beyond the reach of the police, which
is plain as plain could be from both near and far; nor do they
fear need — they’ve put plenty aside. Could not they resur-
rect the honor and independence of the Russian intelligen-
tsia? Could not they speak out in defense of the persecuted,
in defense of freedom, against rank injustices and the squalid
lies that are foisted upon us? Two hundred such men (and
they number half a thousand altogether) by coming forward
and taking a united stand would purify the public air in our
country and all but transform our whole lifel The prerevolu-
tionary intelligentsia did this in their thousands, without
waiting for the protection of fame. But can we find as many as
ten among our smatterers? The rest feel no such needl (Even
a person whose father was shot thinks nothing of it, swallows

THE SMATTERERS

die feet.) And what shall we say about our prominent men at
the top? Are they any better than the smatterers?

In Stalin’s day, if you refiised to sign some newspaper
smear or denunciation, or to call for the death or imprison-
ment of your comrade, you really might have been threat-
ened with death or imprisonment yourself. But today — what
threat today induces our silver-haired and eminent elders to
take up their pens, obsequiously asking "where?,” and sign
some vile nonsense concocted by a third person about Sak-
harov? Only their own worthlessness. What force impels a
great twentieth-century composer to become the pitiful pup-
pet of third-rate bureaucrats from the Ministry of Culture and
at their bidding sign any contemptible piece of paper that is
pushed at him, defending whoever they tell him to abroad
and hounding whoever they want him to at home? (The com-
poser’s soul has come into direct and intimate contact — with
no screen in between — with the dark, destructive soul of the
twentieth century. He has gripped — no, it has gripped him
with such piercing authenticity that when — if! — mankind
enters upon a more enlightened age, our descendants will
hear from Shostakovich’s music how we were in the devil’s
clutches, utterly in its possession, and that we found beauty
in those clutches and in that infernal breathing.)

Was the behavior of the great Russian scholars in the past
ever so wretched? Or the great Russian artists? Their tradi-
tion has been broken: we are the smatterers.

What is triply shameful is that now it is not fear of persecu-
tion, but devious calculations of vanity, self-interest, personal
welfare and tranquillity that make the “Moscow stars” among
the smatterers and the middle stratum of “moderates” so
pliant Lydia Chukovskaya 18 is right: the time has come to
count some people out of the intelligentsia. And if that
doesn’t mean all these, then the meaning of the word has
been irretrievably lost

18. Lydia Chukovskaya, the daughter of the well-known children’s writer
Komei Chukovsky (1882-1969), is one of the Soviet Union’s leading dis-
sident writers and the author of two short novels, The Deserted House and
Going Under. She was expelled from the Writers’ Union in January
1974.— Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

Oh, there have been fearless people 1 Fearless enough to
speak up for an old building that was being demolished (as
long as it wasn’t a cathedral), and even the whole Lake Bai-
kal area. 18 And we must be thankful for that, of course. One
of the contributors to the present anthology was to have been
an exceptionally distinguished person with a string of ranks
and titles to his name. In private conversations his heart
bleeds for the irrevocable ruin that has befallen the Russian
people. He knows our history and our culture through and
through. But — he declined: What’s the use P Nothing will
come of it . . .the usual good excuse of the smatterers.

We have got what we deserve. So low have we sunk.

When they jerked the string from on top and said we could
be a little bolder (1956, 1962) we straightened our numbed
spines just a trifle. When they jerked “quiet!” (1957, 1963)
we subsided at once. There was also the spontaneous occur-
rence of 1967-1968, when samizdat came pouring out like a
spring flood, more and more names appeared, new names
signed protests and it seemed that only a little more was
needed, only a tiny bit more, and we should begin to
breathe. And did it take all that much to crush us? Fifty or so
of the most audacious people were deprived of work in their
professions. A few were expelled from the party, a few from
the unions, and eighty or so protest signers were summoned
for discussions with their party committee. And they came
away from those “discussions” pale and crestfallen.

And the smatterers took flight, dropping in their haste their
most important discovery, the very condition of continued ex-
istence, rebirth and thought — samizdat. Was it so long ago
since the smatterers had been in hot pursuit of the latest
items of samizdat, begging for extra copies to be typed, start-
ing to collect samizdat libraries or sending samizdat to the
provinces? Now they began to bum those libraries and
cherish the virginity of their typewriters, only occasionally
borrowing a forbidden leaflet in some dark passageway,

19. A reference to the extensive industrial pollution of Lake Baikal and its
surroundings and to recent protests on environmental grounds. — Trans.

THE SMATTERERS

snatching a quick look at it and returning it at once as if they
had burned their fingers.

Yes, in the course of those persecutions a definite core of
the intelligentsia did take shape and emerge into view, con-
sisting of people who continued to risk their necks and make
sacrifices — by openly or in wordless secrecy keeping dan-
gerous materials, by fearlessly helping prisoners or by paying
with their own freedom.

But there was another “core” that also came to light and
discovered an ingenious alternative: to flee the country!
Thereby preserving their own unique individuality Cover
there I shall be able to develop Russian culture in peace and
quiet”). Or saving those whom they had left behind (“from
over there we shall be better able to defend your rights
here”). Or, finally, saving their children, who were more pre-
cious than the children of the rest of their compatriots.

Such was the “core of the Russian intelligentsia” that came
to light and that could exist even without Russia. But all this
would be forgiven us, would arouse only sympathy — our
downtrodden degradation and our subservience to the
lie — if we meekly confessed to our infirmity, our attachment
to material prosperity, our spiritual unpreparedness for trials
too severe for us to bear: we are the victims of history that
happened before our time, we were bom into it, and have
tasted our fair share of it, and here we are, floundering and
not knowing how to escape from it.

But no! We contrive in this situation to find tortuous ex-
cuses of stunning sublimity as to why we should “become
spiritually aware of ourselves without abandoning our scien-
tific research institutes” (Pomerants) — as if “becoming spiri-
tually aware” were a matter of cozy reflection, not of harsh
ordeal and merciless trial. We have not renounced our arro-
gance in the least. We insist on the noble, inherited title of
intelligentsia, on the right to be the supreme arbiters of every
spirtual manifestation in our own country and of mankind: to
make peremptory judgments about social theories, trends,
movements, historical currents and the activities of promi-

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THE SMATTERERS

nent individuals from the safety of our burrows. Even as we
put on our coats in the lobbies of our institutes we grow a
head taller, and by the evening over the tea table we are al-
ready pronouncing the supreme judgment and deciding
which actions and which of their perpetrators the “in-
telligentsia will forgive” or “not forgive.”

Observing the pitiful way the central smatterers actually
behave in the service of the Soviet state, it is impossible to
believe the high historical pedestal they see themselves as
occupying — each placing himself, his friends and his col-
leagues on that pedestal. The increasingly narrow specializa-
tion of professional disciplines, which enables semi-
ignoramuses to become doctors of science, does not bother
the smatterer in the slightest.

So powerful is the effect upon all educated people of the
smatterers' high opinion of themselves that even Altayev,
that stubborn exposer of the smatterers, bows to tradition in
the interval between his exposures: “Today [our] intelligen-
tsia manifestly holds the fate of Russia, and with it that of the
whole world, in its hands”! Bitter laughter. . . . On the
strength of Russian experience and in the face of the confu-
sion in the West at the present time, it could — but its hands
are feeble and its heart failing.

In 1969 this surge of self-satisfaction on the part of the sci-
entific and technical smatterers spilled out into samizdat
with an article by Semyon Telegin (pseudonymous, of
course), entitled “What Is to Be Done?” The tone is that of a
breezy, pushing know-it-all, quick at side associations and
with a familiar, low wit (Russisch kulturisch ), at one moment
showing his contempt for the population with which he is
obliged to share the same plot of dry land (“the human pig-
sty”), at another indulging in rhetorical flourishes: “But has
my reader ever thought . . . ?” The author takes his “creative
principle, source of ethics and humanism” from the apes, and
believes that the best way out for the disillusioned is “the
football stadium” and the worst “to join a sect.”

What is important, though, is not so much the actual author
as the circle of people who share his views and whom he

*54

THE SMATTERERS

plainly recommends as “progressive intellectuals” (party
members, for they sit about at party meetings and are in
charge of “individual work areas”): “We are the flower of
thinking Russia,” who “create a philosophical environment
of our own in which we can live without becoming entangled
in contradictions. . . . Imagine a class of highly educated
people armed with the ideas of modem science, able, in-
dependent, fearless thinkers, altogether accustomed to think
and fond of thinking, but not plowing the land.”

Nor does Telegin hide these other peculiar features of his
associates: “We are people accustomed to think one thing,
say another and do a third. . . . The total moral demobiliza-
tion has affected us too.” What he has in mind is triplicity, a
triple code of morals, “for oneself, for society, and for the
state.” But is this a sin? Telegin cheerfully maintains that
“herein lies our victory ”1 What was that? Ah, the regime
would like us to think as subserviently as we speak and
work, but we think — fearlessly! “We have asserted our
inner freedom”! (Astonishing: if secretly making a gesture of
contempt in your pocket is inner freedom, what is inner slav-
ery? We are inclined to define inner freedom as the ability
both to think and act untrammeled by external fetters, and
outward freedom as a situation when there are no fetters at
all.)

It is precisely in Telegin’s article that the “flower of think-
ing Russia” has comprehensively and very openly expressed
itself. Let us familiarize ourselves with its contents — it will
be an enriching experience.

“Under a regime of oppression,” claims Telegin, a new
culture has arisen, “a system of relationships and a system of
thinking”; it is “a colossus on two legs — art and science.” In
the artistic sphere there are the guitarist-balladeers and in-
dependent samizdat literature. In the field of science there is
“the powerful methodology of physics” and stemming from it
“an entire philosophy of life,” and beyond this “there are
dozens of outgrowths and local subcultures sprouting in the
drawing offices of planning departments, the corridors of re-
search institutes and the foyers of institutes of the Academy

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THE SMATTERERS

of Sciences. . . . There is scope for creative people here, and
there are plenty of them. . . . Science cannot be curbed by
any authority” (oh, yeah). And — it will be possible to “apply
the methodology of physics to the subtleties of ethics,” and
“This subterranean culture will act like yeast on the tribe of
new, whole people, giants, who will spring up and to whom
our fears will seem ridiculous.”

There follows a daring plan explaining how this culture is
to be used for our salvation. The crux of the matter is that “to
speak out openly against the conditions of our existence . . .
is not always the best way. . . . One evil will not cure an-
other . . . secret conspiracies and new parties” will not help
and are not wanted, nor must there be any calls for revolu-
tion.

With the last conclusion we heartily agree, although the
author bases his argument on erroneous premises: he at-
tributes the fall of autocracy solely to society’s rejection of
the idea of the bureaucratic state and not to any revolutionary
activity. This is not true, and no parallel can be drawn here:
there was very real revolutionary activity, autocracy was not
defended one-tenth as fiercely as it should have been and the
intelligentsia was determined to sacrifice itself. But we do
agree with his practical conclusion: that we abandon the idea
of revolution, and “not make plans for the creation of a new
mass party of the Leninist type.”

What, then, are his proposals? They are as follows: “ini-
tially no great sacrifices are envisaged” (which is very reas-
suring for the smatterers). Stage 1: “nonacceptance of the
oppressors’ culture” and “building a culture” of our own (to
start with, by reading samizdat and displaying a high level of
understanding in the smoking lounges of research institutes).
Stage 2 : making “efforts to disseminate this culture among
the people,” and even “actively bringing this culture to the
people” (the methodology of physics? or the guitar songs?),
“inculcating into the people an understanding of what we
ourselves have come to understand,” for which we need to
seek “roundabout methods.” This approach “will require
first and foremost not courage [for the nth time this soul-

256

THE SMATTERERS

soothing balm!] but the gift of persuasion, clarification, the
ability to awaken the attention of the people and hold it over
a long period of time without attracting the attention of the
authorities. . . . Russia needs not only platforms and fanatics
but also . . . vehement critics and skilled missionaries of the
new culture. . . . After all, we find a common language with
the people when we talk about football and fishing — we
need to find concrete ways of going to the people. . . . And
surely, with our philosophy [etc., etc.] ... we shall be able
to cope with a problem that even semi-illiterate preachers of
religion have tackled successfully?”! (Alas, alas, this is where
the smatterers betray their arrogance and shortsightedness,
for it is not a question of literacy, but of spiritual power.)

We are quoting at such length because these are the views
not of Telegin alone but of all the self-assured ideologists of
our central smatterers. No matter which one we listen to, this
is all we ever hear: a program of cautious enlightenment 1 An
article by Chelnov (in the Vestnik RSKD, No. 97) is entitled,
exactly like Telegin’s, though not by any design, “What Is to
Be Done?” His answer is: “create secret Christian fraterni-
ties,” and he relies on a millennial improvement in morals.
L. Ventsov’s “Think!” (in Vestnik , No. 99), also by no design,
offers the same remedy as Telegin! For a brief period a pro-
fusion of journals and more journals sprang up in samizdat:
Ray of Freedom, The Sower, Free Thought, Democrat, all of
them strictly clandestine, of course, and all of them offering
identical advice: just don’t reveal your face, just don’t break
the rule of secrecy, but slowly spread a correct understanding
among the people. . . . What is this? The same thousand-
year-old pastoral that has been outdistanced a hundredfold
by the events of the space age. It seemed so easy: philos-
ophize in one’s burrow, hand the results over to samizdat,
and the rest will happen automatically!

But it won’t.

In the warm, well-lit, well-equipped rooms of their re-
search institutes the “pure” scientists and technicians, while
roundly condemning their brothers in the arts for “toadying
to the regime,” have become accustomed to overlooking their

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THE SMATTERERS

own innocuous service to the state; but that service is no less
terrible, and history will make them answer no less harshly
for it. Suppose that tomorrow we were to lose one-half of all
our research institutes, the most important and secret ones,
would science be brought to a halt? No, but imperialism
would. “The creation of an antitotalitarian culture can also
lead to material freedom,” affirms Telegin, but how are we to
understand this: Scientists (and now that science has become
an industry they are essentially qualified industrial workers)
spend their whole working day turning out material appur-
tenances — if not of “culture” then of civilization — that is,
materially reinforcing the lie, and everywhere voting, agree-
ing with and repeating whatever they are told — is this the
kind of culture that will save us all?

In the years since Telegin’s article there have been many
public opportunities for the tribe of giants at least to shrug
their shoulders or to take just one breath, but no! They
signed what was required of them against Dubdek, against
Sakharov, against whoever they were ordered to, and making
rude signs in their pockets they scuttled off to their smoking
lounges to develop a “professional subculture” and hammer
out a “powerful methodology.”

Do psychiatrists at the Serbsky Institute 20 perhaps live by
the same “triple moral code” and pride themselves on their
“inner freedom”? And sundry procurators and judges in high
places? For there are people of refined intellect among them,
in no way inferior to Telegin’s giants.

This smug declaration is as deceptive as it is confused in
that it comes very close to the truth — which warms the read-
er’s heart — and then at the critical danger point veers
abruptly onto another tack. “Ohne uns /” exclaims Telegin.
Right. “Refuse to accept the oppressors’ culture!” Also right.
But when, where, and in what respects? Not in the cloak-
room after a meeting, but at the meeting — by refusing to
repeat what we do not believe, by refusing to vote against
our will! And in that little office, by refusing to sign anything

20. One of the most notorious of the psychiatric hospitals where political
dissidents are detained. — Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

that we did not compose in all good conscience ourselves.
This has nothing to do with rejecting some sort of “culture."
Nobody is foisting “culture” on us, it is lies they are foisting
upon us and it is only lies that we must not accept, but at
once, right then and right there where we are being asked to
accept them, instead of venting our indignation later in the
evening over the tea table at home. We must reject lies on
the spot, without thinking about the consequences for our
salaries, our families and our leisure for spreading the “new
culture.” We must reject lies without worrying whether
others will follow in our footsteps and without looking
around to see if the rest of the population is catching the
habit.

And it is because the answer is so clear and reduces to
such a simple, straightforward form that the anonymous ide-
ologist of the arrogant, shallow and sterile tribe of giants
evades it with all the oratorical brilliance he can muster. 21

So for the time being let those who feel unable to take the
risk spare us in our filth and baseness their witty arguments,
exposures and explanations of the origins of our Russian
vices.

FIVE

And how do the central smatterers see their place in the
country in relation to their own people? Whoever supposes
that they repent of their lackey’s role is mistaken. Even Pom-
erants, who represents quite a different group of the Moscow
smatterers — unestablished, nonmanagerial, non-party mem-
bers, working in the humanities — takes care to extol “the
Leninist cultural revolution” (which destroyed the old modes
of production, a very valuable service I) and to defend the
form of government which existed from 1917 to 1922 (“a tem-
porary dictatorship within the framework of democracy”).

ai. Samizdat versions differ. And later Telegin altered the ending, adding:
“The first steps are boycott, nonparticipation and indifference.” Indifference
is nothing new; but as for nonparticipation — in what?

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THE SMATTERERS

And “the bourgeois, of course, fully deserved the despotic
treatment he received at the hands of the victorious revolu-
tionaries. His cowardice and his servility are the breeding
ground of despots.” His servility, not oursl But in what re-
spect is the behavior of the central smatterers more com-
mendable than that of the so-called bourgeois?

Neither those who sing the praises of the smatterers nor
their detractors voice as much as a suggestion of any guilt
toward the people for the past or present, the guilt which so
tormented the prerevolutionary intelligentsia. In this respect
they are unanimous, all of them, even Altayev: “It might not
be such a bad thing if the people themselves were to become
aware of their guilt toward the intelligentsia.”

All the comparisons that the central smatterers draw be-
tween themselves and the people are in their own favor.
Pomerants: “The intelligentsia is a measure of social
forces — progressive and reactionary. When set against the
intelligentsia the entire people coalesces into a reactionary
mass ” (emphasis added). “It is that section of the educated
stratum of society in which spiritual development takes
place, old values are destroyed and new ones arise, and in
which one of the steps from animal to God is taken. . . . The
intelligentsia is precisely that which it has sought in others,
in the people, in the proletariat, and so on: the ferment that
sets history in motion.” Furthermore: “Love of one’s people
is far more dangerous [than love of animals]: there is no
threshold here to prevent one from going down on all fours.”
And simply: “ The backbone of a new people is being formed
here ... a new something will replace the people . . . the
people involved in creative brainwork will become the cho-
sen people of the twentieth century” II I

Telegin says the same thing, and so does Gorsky (yet an-
other pseudonym, writing in Vestnik, No. 97): “The road to
supreme values lies elsewhere than in fusion with the peo-
ple.” At the opposite pole from the opinion of their foolish
predecessors in the intelligentsia.

Or take religion. Pomerants: “The peasants’ understanding
of religion is imperfect,” that is, philosophically crude: “You

260

THE SMATTERERS

can call it God, the Absolute, the Void ... I have no particu-
lar preference for any of these words.” Simple, sincere devo-
tion to the faith, to its precepts and even its rights — ugh,
their understanding is imperfect, just as they don’t under-
stand agronomy. (With peasant agronomy there was grain
enough and the soil wasn’t exhausted, but now that things
are scientifically done we shall soon be without soil al-
together. But then Pomerants’s entire argument is no doubt
directed against the pochvenniki, or “men of the soil,” 22 and
his ideal is “people of the air, who have lost all their roots in
everyday existence.”) On the other hand “the intellectuals
are today seeking God. Religion has ceased to be the mark of
the people. It has become the mark of the elite.” The same
point is made by Gorsky: “To confuse a return to the Church
with going to the people is a dangerous prejudice.”

One of them is writing in Moscow samizdat, the others in a
Paris journal. It is unlikely that they know each other, but
what unity 1 One cannot pick a single hole in it. Which means
that it is not just the invention of individuals, but a trend.

But what do we recommend for the people, then? Abso-
lutely nothing. There is no people, this is something else
about which they all agree: “Culture, like a snake, simply
sheds its skin, and the old skin, the people, lies lifeless in the
dust.” “The patriarchal virtues are irretrievably lost to man-
kind,” “the muzhik can be resurrected only in opera houses.”
“We are not surrounded by the people. The peasantry in the
developed countries is becoming too small to surround us,”
“peasant nations are hungry nations, and nations whose peas-
antry has vanished are nations in which famine has disap-
peared.” (This was before we ran into a technological dead
end.)

But if this is the smatterers’ interpretation of the general
situation of peoples, how do they view the future of nations?
This has been thought out too. Pomerants: “Nations are local
cultures and will gradually disappear.” And “the position of

22. The name of a group of writers and thinkers in the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury who advocated a kind of Christian naturalism, which was to be achieved
through a study of organic historical, social and spiritual forces inherent in
the Russian people. — Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

the intelligentsia is always to be halfway between. . . . Spiri-
tually all intellectuals nowadays belong to a diaspora. No-
where are we complete strangers. And nowhere do we feel
quite at home.”

It is on this spirit of internationalism and cosmopolitanism
that our entire generation was reared. And (leaving aside — if
we can leave it aside! — the nationalities policy as it was in
practice in the 1920s) there is great spiritual nobility and
beauty in it, and mankind is probably destined one day to
rise to those noble heights. This view preponderates widely
in European society too at the present time. In West Ger-
many it is creating a mood in which people are not particu-
larly concerned about the reunification of Germany, and see
no mystical imperatives in German national unity. In Great
Britain, which still clings to the illusion of a mythical British
Commonwealth and where society is keenly indignant over
the slighest racial discrimination, it has led to the country’s
being inundated with Asians and West Indians who are to-
tally indifferent to the English land, its culture and tradi-
tions, and are simply seeking to latch onto a ready-made high
standard of living. Is this such a good thing? It is not our
business to judge from a distance. But despite the prognos-
tications, imprecations and denunciations, this has turned out
everywhere to be the century in which nation after nation
has come to life, become aware of its existence and gathered
itself up. And the miraculous birth and consolidation of Israel
after two thousand years of dispersal is only the most striking
of a multitude of examples.

One would think that our authors would be aware of this,
yet they ignore it in their arguments about Russia. Gorsky is
irritated by “unthinking patriotism,” by “instinctive depen-
dence on innate and atavistic elements,” and would deny us
the right simply to love the land of our birth irrationally and
unpremeditatedly, demanding instead that each of us rise to
“an act of spiritual self-determination” and only thus choose
a homeland for ourselves. Among the unifying features of a
nation he makes no mention of a native languagel (which
makes him a worse theoretician even than Stalin), nor of a

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THE SMATTERERS

sense of the history of the country. He acknowledges, as a
merely subsidiary factor, “an ethical and territorial commu-
nity,” but sees religion as the basis of national unity (this is
true, but the religion may extend beyond the nation) and
again a loosely defined “culture” (perhaps the same culture
that Pomerants says “slithers like a snake”?). He insists that
the existence of nations is a contradiction of the Pentecost.
(While we for our part thought that by descending upon the
apostles with many tongues the Holy Ghost confirmed the
diversity of the nations of mankind, as they have existed
since that time.) Irascibly he thunders that for Russia the
“central creative idea” must be not “national rebirth” (it is
he who puts the expression in quotation marks and forbids us
to entertain such a foolish concept) but “the struggle for
Freedom and spiritual values.” We, in our ignorance, foil to
see any opposition here: how can spiritually lacerated Russia
retrieve its spiritual values other than by national rebirth? To
this day the entire history of mankind has run its course in
the form of tribal and national histories, and all important his-
torical movements have begun within the national frame-
work, and none of them in Esperanto. A nation, like a family,
is a natural, uncontrived association of people whose
members are innately disposed toward one another, and
there are grounds for inveighing against such associations or
calling for their abolition today. What comes afterward will
be clear in the distant future, when we are not here.

This, of course, is a point made by Pomerants too. He as-
sures us that “from the standpoint of nationality all cats are
gray. . . . Fighting the customs of one’s native land when
one’s feet are firmly planted on one’s native soil is about as
simple as dragging oneself out of a bog.” And once again we
are too stupid to comprehend: from what soil should one
fight the vices of one’s own country? International soil? We
have already experienced that fight (carried out with Latvian
bayonets and Magyar pistols) with our ribs and the backs of
our necks — no thank youl We must reform ourselves by our-
selves and not invoke other wise men to be our reformers.

People will ask why I have fastened onto these two, Po-

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THE SMATTERERS

merants and Gorsky, or rather, these one and a half (a half for
the pseudonym), two with Altayev, or two and a half with
Telegin.

Because they represent a trend, because they are all
theoreticians, and because this is evidently not the last we
shall hear of them. So just to be on the safe side let us chalk
up the following. In the summer of 1972, when the forests of
northern Russia were ablaze as a result of Soviet mis-
management (the concerns of our leaders were in the Middle
East and Latin America), Semyon Telegin, a live wire, a rol-
licker and an atheist, put out a samizdat leaflet in which he
rose to his full gigantic height for the first time and an-
nounced: this is your divine retribution, Russia, for your
evildoings! What a breakthrough.

To find out how the central smatterers view the national
problem, go to the leading smatterer families, the ones that
keep pedigreed dogs, and ask them what they call their dogs.
You will hear (many times over): Foma, Kuzma, Potap,
Makar, Timofei . . . and this grates upon nobody’s ears, and
nobody feels any shame. After all, peasants are only “some-
thing you see in operas,” there is no people left, so why
should they not call their dogs by peasant Christian names?

Oh, how is one to traverse the brittle ridge without offend-
ing one’s own people by wrongful accusation and without
condoning one’s own vices when they are more grievous
than another’s?

Six

But the picture Pomerants paints of the people is, alas, to a
large extent true. Just as we are probably mortally offending
him now by alleging that there is no longer an intelligentsia
in our country, and that it has all disintegrated into a collec-
tion of smatterers, so he too mortally wounds us by his asser-
tion that neither is there a people any longer.

“The people no longer exists. There is the mass, with a
dim recollection that it was once the people and the bearer of

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THE SMATTERERS

God within itself, but now it is utterly empty. . . . The peo-
ple in the sense of a Chosen People, a source of spiritual val-
ues, is nonexistent. There are the neurasthenic intel-
lectuals — and the masses. . , . What do the collective farm
workers sing? Some remnants of their peasant heritage” and
whatever is drilled into them “at school, in the army and on
the radio. . . . Where is it, this ‘people’? The real native
people, dancing its folk dances, narrating its folktales, weav-
ing its folk-patterned lace? In our country all that remains are
the vestiges of a people, like the vestiges of snow in spring.
. . . The people as a great historical force, a backbone of cul-
ture, a source of inspiration for Pushkin and Goethe, no
longer exists. . . . What is usually called the people in our
country is not the people at all but a petit bourgeoisie.”

Gloom and doom. And not far from the truth either.

Indeed, how could the people have survived? It has been
subjected to two processes both tending toward the same end
and each lending impetus to the other. One is the universal
process (which, if it had been postponed any longer in Rus-
sia, we might have escaped altogether) of what is fashionably
known as massovization (an abominable word, but then the
process is no better), a product of the new Western technol-
ogy, the sickening growth of cities, and the general standard-
ization of methods of information and education. The second
is our own special Soviet process, designed to rub off the
age-old face of Russia and rub on another, synthetic one, and
this has had a still more decisive and irreversible effect.

How could the people possibly have survived? Icons, obe-
dience to elders, bread-baking and spinning wheels were all
forcibly thrown out of the peasants’ cottages. Then millions
of cottages — as well-designed and comfortable as one could
wish — were completely ravaged, pulled down or put into
the wrong hands and five million hardworking, healthy fami-
lies, together with infants still at the breast, were dispatched
to their death on long winter journeys or on their arrival in
the tundra. (And our intelligentsia did not waver or cry out,
and its progressive part even assisted in driving them out.
That was when the intelligentsia ceased to be, in 1930; and

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is that the moment for which the people must beg its forgive-
ness?) The destruction of the remaining cottages and home-
steads was less trouble after that. They took away the land
which had made the peasant a peasant, depersonalized it
even more than serfdom had, deprived the peasant of all in-
centive to work and live, packed some off to the Magni-
togorsks , 23 while the rest — a whole generation of doomed
women — were forced to feed the colossus of the state before
the war, for the entire duration of the war and after the war.
All the outward, international successes of our country and
the flourishing growth of the thousands of scientific research
institutes that now exist have been achieved by devastating
the Russian village and the traditional Russian way of life. In
its place they have festooned the cottages and the ugly multi-
story boxes in the suburbs of our cities with loudspeakers,
and even worse, have fixed them on all the telegraph poles in
city centers (even today they will be blaring over the entire
face of Russia from six in the morning until midnight, the
supreme mark of culture, and if you go and shut them off it's
an anti-Soviet act). And those loudspeakers have done their
job well: they have driven everything individual and every
bit of folklore out of people's heads and drilled in stock sub-
stitutes, they have trampled and defiled the Russian language
and dinned vacuous, untalented songs (composed by the in-
telligentsia) into our ears. They have knocked down the last
village churches, flattened and desecrated graveyards,
flogged the horse to death with Komsomol zeal, and their
tractors and five-ton lorries have polluted and churned up the
centuries-old roads whose gentle tracery adorns our coun-
tryside. Where is there left, and who is there left to dance
and weave lace? Furthermore, they have visited the village
youth with specially juicy tidbits in the form of quantities of
drab, idiotic films (the intellectual: “We have to release
them — they are mass-circulation films") — and the same
rubbish is crammed into school textbooks and slightly more

23. Magnitogorsk is a major city in the Urals that underwent most of its de-
velopment in the twenties and thirties and became a showplace of Soviet in-
dustry.— Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

adult books (and you know who writes them, don’t you?), to
prevent new growth from springing up where the old timber
was felled. Like tanks they have ridden roughshod over the
entire historical memory of the people (they gave us back
Alexander Nevsky without his cross , 24 but anything more re-
cent — no), so how could the people possibly have saved
itself?

And so, sitting here in the ashes left behind by the confla-
gration, let us try to work it out.

The people does not exist? Then it’s true that there can be
no national revival? But what’s that gap there? I thought I
glimpsed something: as a result of the collapse of universal
technological progress, in line with the transition that will be
made to a stable economy, there will be a restoration every-
where of the primeval attachment of the majority of the peo-
ple to the land, to the simplest materials and tools, and to
physical labor (which many satiated town-dwellers are even
now instinctively seeking for themselves). Thus in every
country, even the highly developed ones, there will inevita-
bly be a restoration of some sort of successor to the peasant
multitudes, something to fill the vacuum left by the people,
an agricultural and craftsman class (naturally with a new, but
decentralized, technology). But what about us; can the “oper-
atic” peasant return no more?

But then the intelligentsia doesn’t exist either, does it? Are
the smatterers dead wood for development?

Have all the classes been replaced by inferior substitutes?
And if so how can we develop?

But surely someone exists? And how can one deny human
beings a future? Can human beings be prevented from going
on living? We hear their weary, kindly voices sometimes
without even seeing their faces — as they pass by us some-
where in the twilight, we hear them talking of their everyday
concerns, which they express in authentic — and sometimes
still very spontaneous — Russian speech, we catch sight of
their faces, alive and eager, and their smiles, we experience
their good deeds for ourselves, sometimes when we least ex-
24. Presumably a reference to Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky . — Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

pect them, we observe self-sacrificing families with children
undergoing all kinds of hardships rather than destroy a
soul — so how can one deny them all a future?

It is rashness to conclude that the people no longer exists.
Yes, the village has been routed and its remnants choked,
yes, the outlying suburbs are filled with the click of dom-
inoes (one of the achievements of universal literacy) and bro-
ken bottles, there are no traditional costumes and no folk
dances, the language has been corrupted and thoughts and
ambitions even more deformed and misdirected; but why is
it that not even these broken bottles, nor the litter blown
back and forth by the wind in city courtyards, fills one with
such despair as the careerist hypocrisy of the smatterers? It is
because the people on the whole takes no part in the official
lie, and this today is its most distinctive feature, allowing one
to hope that it is not, as its accusers would have it, utterly
devoid of God. Or at any rate, it has preserved a spot in its
heart that has still not been scorched or trampled to death.

It is also rashness to conclude that there is no intelligen-
tsia. Each one of us is personally acquainted with at least a
handful of people who have resolutely risen above both the
lie and the pointless bustle of the smatterers. And I am en-
tirely in accord with those who want to see, who want to
believe that they can already see the nucleus of an in-
telligentsia, which is our hope for spiritual renewal. Only I
would recognize and distinguish this nucleus by other signs:
not by the academic qualifications of its members, nor the
number of books they have published, nor by the high educa-
tional level of those who “are accustomed to think and fond
of thinking, but not of plowing the land,” nor by the scien-
tific cleverness of a methodology which so easily creates
“professional subcultures,” nor by a sense of alienation from
state and people, nor by membership in a spiritual diaspora
(“nowhere quite at home”). I would recognize this nucleus
by the purity of its aspirations, by its spiritual selflessness in
the name of truth, and above all for the sake of this country,
in which it lives. This nucleus will have been brought up not
so much in libraries as on spiritual sufferings. It is not the

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THE SMATTERERS

nucleus that wishes to be regarded as a nucleus without hav-
ing to forego the comforts of life enjoyed by the Moscow
smatterers. Dostoyevsky dreamed in 1877 of the appearance
in Russia of a generation of “modest and valiant young peo-
ple.” But on that occasion it was the “demons” (“the pos-
sessed”) who appeared — and we can see where that got us.
I can testify, however, that during the last few years I have
seen these modest and valiant young people with my own
eyes, heard them with my own ears; it was they who, like an
invisible film, kept me floating in air over a seeming void and
prevented me from falling. Not all of them are still at liberty
today, and not all of them will preserve their freedom tomor-
row. And far from all of them are evident to our eyes and
ears — like spring streams they trickle somewhere beneath
the dense, gray, hard-packed snow.

It is the method that is at fault: to reason along the lines of
“social strata” and accept no other basis. If you take social
strata you will end in despair (as did Amalrik). 25 The in-
telligentsia as a vast social stratum has ended its days in a
steaming swamp and can no longer become airborne again.
But even in the intelligentsia’s former and better times, it
was incorrect to include people in the intelligentsia in terms
of whole families, clans, groups and strata. There might well
have been particular families, clans, groups and strata that
were intelligentsia through and through, but even so it is as
an individual that a man becomes a member of the in-
telligentsia in the true sense of the word. If the intelligentsia
was a stratum at all, it was a psychological, not a social, one;
consequently entrance and exit always depended upon indi-
vidual conduct, not upon one’s occupation or social standing.

A stratum, a people, the masses, the smatterers — they all
consist of human beings, and there is no way in which the fii-

25. Andrei Amalrik (b. 1938), a nonconformist Soviet writer, imprisoned in
1965 1 and subsequently exiled to Siberia for having produced "anti-Soviet”
and “pornographic” works. In 1966 Amalrik was permitted to return to Mos-
cow; in May 1970 he was again arrested on trumped-up charges as a result of
his writings, and in July 1973 was sentenced to three years forced labor. This
sentence was commuted in November 1973 to three years exile in Siberia.

For a discussion of Amalrik’s writings, see pages 280-281 and note on
page 280.— Trans.

269

THE SMATTERERS

ture can be closed to human beings: human beings deter-
mine their future themselves, and whatever point has been
reached on the crooked, descending path, it is never too late
to take a turn for the good and the better.

The future is indestructible, and it is in our hands. If we
make the right choices.

Now it is Pomerants who, among the many contradictory
utterances he makes in his writings, comes out here and
there with some strikingly truthful ones, and if we put them
together we shall see that even from differing positions one
can arrive at similar conclusions. “The present population is
an amorphous mass between two crystalline structures. . . .
It can assume a structure if an axis or a branch appears, how-
ever fragile, around which crystals will start to form.” With
this I agree entirely. However, doggedly devoted as he is to
his intelligentsia ideals, Pomerants assigns this role of axis or
branch exclusively to the intelligentsia. Since samizdat is not
easily accessible we shall have to quote him at length: “The
mass can crystallize anew into something resembling a peo-
ple only around a new intelligentsia. ... I am counting on
the intelligentsia not at all because it is good. . . . Intellec-
tual development in itself only increases man’s capacity for
evil. . . . My chosen people are bad, this I know . . . but the
rest are even worse.” True, “before salting something you
must first become the salt again,” and the intelligentsia has
ceased to be that salt. Ah, “if only we possessed sufficient
strength of character to give up all our laurels, our degrees
and our titles. . . .To put an end to this cowardice and whin-
ing. . . . To prefer a clean conscience to a clean doorstep and
to school ourselves to make do with an honest slice of bread
without the caviar.” But: “I do believe that the intelligentsia
can change and that it can attract others to follow in its foot-
steps. . . .”

What is clear to us here is that Pomerants distinguishes the
intelligentsia and sets it apart in terms of its intellectual de-
velopment, and only hopes that it will also possess moral
qualities.

Was this not at the heart of our old error which proved the

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undoing of us all — that the intelligentsia repudiated re-
ligious morality and chose for itself an atheistic humanism
that supplied an easy justification both for the hastily consti-
tuted revolutionary tribunals and the rough justice meted out
in the cellars of the Cheka? 26 And did not the rebirth of a
“nucleus of the intelligentsia” after 1910 arise out of a desire
to return to a religious morality — only to be cut short by the
chatter of machine guns? And is not that nucleus whose
beginnings we think we already discern today a repetition of
the one that the revolution cut short, is it not in essence a
“latter-day Vekhi”? For it regards the moral doctrine of the
value of the individual as the key to the solution of social
problems. It was for a nucleus of this kind that Berdyayev
yearned: “An ecclesiastical intelligentsia which would com-
bine genuine Christianity with an enlightened and clear un-
derstanding of the cultural and historical missions of the
country.” So did S. Bulgakov: “An educated class with a Rus-
sian soil, an enlightened mind and a strong will.”

Not only is this nucleus not yet a compact mass, as a nu-
cleus should be, but it is not even collected together, it is
scattered, its components mutually unrecognizable: many of
its particles have never seen one another, do not know of one
another, and have no notion of one another’s existence. And
what links them is not membership in an intelligentsia, but a
thirst for truth, a craving to cleanse their souls, and the desire
of each one to preserve around him an area of purity and
brightness. That is why even “illiterate sectarians” and some
obscure milkmaid down on the collective farm are also
members of this nucleus of goodness, united by a common
striving for the pure life. And the covetousness and worldly
wisdom of the cultured academician or artist steers him in ex-
actly the opposite direction — backward into the familiar
lurid darkness of this half century.

What does an “axis” or “branch” for the “crystallization” of
an entire people mean? It means tens of thousands of human
beings. Furthermore, it is a potential stratum — but it will
not overflow into the future in some huge and unobstructed
26. See note 3 on page 11 . — Trans.

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THE SMATTERERS

wave. Forming the “backbone of a new people” is not some-
thing that can be done as safely and lightheartedly as we are
promised, at weekends and in our spare time, without giving
up our scientific research institutes. No, it will have to be
done on weekdays, as part of the mainstream of our life, in its
most dangerous sector — and by each one of us in chilling
isolation.

A society so vicious and polluted, implicated in so many of
the crimes of these last fifty years — by its lies, by its servil-
ity either willing or enforced, by its eagerness to assist or its
cowardly restraint — such a society can only be cured and
purified by passing through a spiritual filter. And this filter is
a terrible one, with holes as fine as the eye of a needle, each
big enough for only one person. And people may pass into
the spiritual future only one at a time, by squeezing through.

By deliberate, voluntary sacrifice.

Times change, and scales too. A hundred years ago the
Russian intelligentsia thought of sacrifice in terms of the
death penalty. Nowadays it is considered a sacrifice to risk
administrative punishment. And in truth this is no easier for
abject, browbeaten characters to stomach.

Even in the most favorable circumstances (if the sacrificial
impulse is felt by large numbers of people simultaneously) it
will not be, as Pomerants anticipates, the caviar (already a
museum piece) that they will have to sacrifice, but the
oranges and butter with which our scientific research centers
are so generously supplied. Malicious critics gleefully al-
leged that in The First Circle I exposed “the low caliber of
love among the people” by quoting the proverb “people
marry for cabbage soup and take a husband for meat” —
while we, of course, love and marry Romeo-style! But there
are many Russian proverbs to cater for different nuances and
situations. There is this one too: “Bread and water make fine
food.”

This is the kind of food on which we shall have to demon-
strate the caliber of our love for this country and its silver
birch trees. To love looking at them is not enough. The harsh
Northeast will have to be tamed — and it will be our pre-

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THE SMATTERERS

cious smatterers’ children who will have to go there, without
waiting for the philistines to pave the way. And the clever
counsels of anonymous authors — conspiracy and more con-
spiracy (“single-handed sorties are no use”), a thousand-year
process of enlightenment, the surreptitious development of
culture — are all rubbish! There is no way left to us to pass
from our present contemptible amorphousness into the future
except through open, personal and predominantly public (to
set an example) sacrifice. We shall have to “rediscover our
cultural treasures and values” not by erudition, not by scien-
tific accomplishment, but by oviform of spiritual conduct,
by laying aside our material well-being and, if the worst
comes to the worst, our lives. And when it becomes apparent
that educational qualifications and the number of scholarly
works published are utterly irrelevant, we shall become won-
deringly aware of the presence beside us of those “semilit-
erate preachers of religion” we so despise.

It would be better if we declared the word “intelligen-
tsia” — so long misconstrued and deformed — dead for the
time being. Of course, Russia will be unable to manage with-
out a substitute for the intelligentsia, but the new word will
be formed not from “understand” or “know,” but from some-
thing spiritual. The first tiny minority who set out to force
their way through the tight holes of the filter will of their
own accord find some new definition of themselves, either
while they are still in the filter, or when they have come out
the other side and recognize themselves and each other. It is
there that the word will be recognized, it will be bom of the
very process of passing through. Or else the remaining major-
ity, without resorting to a new terminology, will simply call
them the righteous. It would not be inaccurate to call them
for the moment a sacrificial elite. The word “elite” here will
arouse the envy of no one, election to it being an extremely
unenviable honor that no one will complain of being passed
over for: come and join us, we implore you!

It is of the lone individuals who pass through (or perish on
the way) that this elite to crystallize the people will be
composed.

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THE SMATTERERS

The filter will grow wider and easier for each subsequent
particle — and the number of particles passing through it will
increase all the time, so that on the far side these worthy in-
dividuals might reconstitute and re-create a worthy people (I
have already explained my interpretation of the word peo-
ple). So that a society might be formed whose chief character-
istic would be not its level of productivity, nor its degree of
prosperity, but the purity of its social relations.

There is absolutely no other way I can envisage for Russia.

All that remains is to describe the structure and operation
of the filter.

SEVEN

People will laugh at us from outside: what a timid and
what a modest step we regard as sacrifice. All over the world
students are occupying universities, going out into the streets
and even toppling governments, while our students are the
tamest in the world: tell them it’s time for a political educa-
tion lecture, refuse to let them take their coats out of the
cloak room, and nobody will leave. In 1962 the whole of
Novocherkassk was in tumult, but at the Polytechnic Insti-
tute they simply locked the door of the students’ quarters and
nobody jumped out the windows I Or take the starving In-
dians, who liberated themselves from British domination by
nonviolent, passive resistance and civil disobedience: but we
are incapable of even this desperate bravery, neither the
working class nor the smatterers, for we have been terrorized
for three generations ahead by dear old Uncle Joe: how can
you not carry out an order of the authorities? That would be
the ultimate in self-destruction.

And if we set out in capital letters the nature of the exami-
nation we are going to set our fellowmen : DO NOT LIE!
DO NOT TAKE PART IN THE LIE! DO NOT SUPPORT
THE LIE! — it is not only the Europeans who are going to
laugh at us, but also the Arab students and the ricksha-drivers
in Ceylon: is this all that is being asked of the Russians? And

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THE SMATTERERS

they call that a sacrifice, a bold step, and not simply the mark
that distinguishes an honest man from a rogue?

But it is all very well for the apples in another barrel to
laugh: those being crushed in ours know that it is indeed a
bold step. Because in our country the daily lie is not the
whim of corrupt natures but a mode of existence, a condition
of the daily welfare of every man. In our country the lie has
been incorporated into the state system as the vital link hold-
ing everything together, with billions of tiny fasteners, sev-
eral dozen to each man.

This is precisely why we find life so oppressive. But it is
also precisely why we should find it natural to straighten up.
When oppression is not accompanied by the lie, liberation
demands political measures. But when the lie has fastened
its claws in us, it is no longer a matter of politics! It is an in-
vasion of man’s moral world, and our straightening up and
refusing to lie is also not political, but simply the retrieval of
our human dignity.

Which is the sacrifice? To go for years without truly
breathing, gulping down stench? Or to begin to breathe, as is
the prerogative of every man on this earth? What cynic would
venture to object aloud to such a policy as nonparticipation
in the lie?

Oh, people will object at once and with ingenuity: what is
a lie? Who can determine precisely where the lie ends and
truth begins? In every historically concrete dialectical situa-
tion, and so on — all the evasions that liars have been using
for the past half century.

But the answer could not be simpler: decide yourself, as
your conscience dictates. And for a long time this will suf-
fice. Depending upon his horizons, his life experience and
his education, each person will have his own perception of
the line where the public and state lie begins: one will see it
as being altogether remote from him, while another will ex-
perience it as a rope already cutting into his neck. And there,
at the point where you yourself in all honesty see the bor-
derline of the lie, is where you must refuse to submit to that
lie. You must shun that part of the lie that is clear and obvi-

275

THE SMATTERERS

ous to you. And if you sincerely cannot see the lie anywhere
at all, then go on quietly living as you did before.

What does it mean, not to lie? It doesn’t mean going
around preaching the truth at the top of your voice (perish
the thought!). It doesn’t even mean muttering what you think
in an undertone. It simply means: not saying what you don t
think , and that includes not whispering, not opening your
mouth, not raising your hand, not casting your vote, not
feigning a smile, not lending your presence, not standing up,
and not cheering.

We all work in different fields and move in different walks
of life. Those who work in the humanities and all who are
studying find themselves much more profoundly and inex-
tricably involved in lying and participating in the lie they
are fenced about by layer after layer of lies. In the technical
sciences it can be more ingeniously avoided, but even so one
cannot escape daily entering some door, attending some
meeting, putting one’s signature to something or undertaking
some obligation which is a cowardly submission to the lie.
The lie surrounds us at work, on our way to work, in our
leisure pursuits — in everything we see, hear and read.

And just as varied as the forms of the lie are the forms of
rejecting it. Whoever steels his heart and opens his eyes to
the tentacles of the lie will in each situation, every day and
every hour, realize what he must do.

Jan Palach burned himself to death. That was an extreme
sacrifice. Had it not been an isolated case it would have
roused Czechoslovakia to action. As an isolated case it will
simply go down in history. But not so much is demanded of
everyone — of you and me. Nor do we have to go out and
face the flamethrowers breaking up demonstrations. All we
have to do is breathe. All we have to do is not lie.

And nobody need be “first,” because there are already
many hundreds of “firsts,” it is only because of their quiet-
ness that we do not notice them (especially those suffering
for their religion, and it is fitting that they work as cleaners
and caretakers). I can point to several dozen people from the
very nucleus of the intelligentsia who have been living this

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THE SMATTERERS

way for a long time, for years! And they are still alive. And
their families haven’t died out. And they still have a roof over
their heads. And food on the table.

Yes, it is a terrible thought! In the beginning the holes in
the filter are so narrow, so very narrow: can a person with so
many needs really squeeze through such a narrow opening?
Let me reassure him: it is only that way at the entrance, at
the very beginning. Very soon, not far along, the holes
slacken and relax their grip, and eventually cease to grip you
altogether. Yes, of course! It will cost you canceled disserta-
tions, annuled degrees, demotions, dismissals, expulsions,
sometimes even deportations. But you will not be cast into
flames. Or crushed by a tank. And you will still have food and
shelter.

This path is the safest and most accessible of all the paths
open to us for the average man in the street. But it is also the
most effective! Only we, knowing our system, can imagine
what will happen when thousands and tens of thousands of
people take this path — how our country will be purified and
transformed without shots or bloodshed.

But this path is also the most moral: we shall be commenc-
ing this liberation and purification with our own souls. Be-
fore we purify the country we shall have purified ourselves.
And this is the only correct historical order: for what is the
good of purifying our country’s air if we ourselves remain
dirty?

People will say: how unfair on the young! After all, if you
don’t utter the obligatory lie at your social science exam,
you’ll be failed and expelled from your institute, and your
education and life will be disrupted.

One of the articles in the present collection discusses the
problem of whether we have correctly assessed the best di-
rections to take in science and are doing what is necessary to
follow them. Be that as it may, educational damage is not the
greatest damage one can suffer in life. Damage to the soul
and corruption of the soul, to which we carelessly assent
from our earliest years, are far more irreparable.

Unfair on the young? But whose is the future if not theirs?

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THE SMATTERERS

Who do we expect to form the sacrificial elite? For whose
sake do we agonize over the future? We are already old. If
they themselves do not build an honest society, they will
never see it at all.

January 1974

278

Does Russia Have a Future?

IGOR SHAFAREVICH

ONE

Hardly has the blessing of free thought begun to return to
us than we are faced with this terrible, yet inevitable, ques-
tion: What is Russia’ s future and what is our part in her des-
tiny? A question intimidating in its magnitude and insolu-
bility, but inescapable, for without an answer to it there is
no answer to the rest of life’s questions.

But even to think about it is terrifying, because of a doubt
that one hardly dare put into words: Is Russia still alive? For
the life and death of nations are not as easily defined as those
of living organisms. A nation may have fulfilled its historic
mission, its creative spirit may have abandoned it, while its
body — the state — lingers on for decades, still capable of
putting heretics to death or subjugating its neighbors. Living
for a great country means more than simply not hilling apart
and making economic ends meet. It must also know why it
lives, be aware of its mission in the world. Does Russia have
such a mission now ? 1

l. “Belief in one’s desire and ability to give the world a message, and to
renew it with the abundance of one’s vitality; belief in the sanctity of one’s
ideals; belief in the strength of one’s love and yearning to serve mankind —
this belief is the pledge of a nation’s highest existence, and by this means

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DOES RUSSIA HAVE A FUTURE?

A. Amalrik, * 2 in one of the most vivid and brilliant works of
postrevolutionary Russian thought, recently gave his answer
to this question. He concluded on the basis of many subtle
observations and historical analogies that Russia is nearing
the culmination of her historical journey. In his opinion a
certain softening of the system does not indicate the begin-
nings of a deliberate policy of liberalization: it is a symptom
of the senility of the regime, which is incapable of changing
to meet the demands of the time, or of dealing effectively
with the resistance it is encountering. But there are no other
forces that can claim a leading role. The intelligentsia — or,
as Amalrik calls them, the middle class — have been brain-
washed by the bureaucracy, they make a cult of submission,
they are too feeble to be capable of developing their own
point of view or organizing themselves. Christian morality
has been beaten and chased from the minds of the people,
who now respect only force, but not personality or liberty.
The Russian people, in the view of the author, has no con-
cept of the equality of all before the law, or of freedom and
its concomitant responsibilities, but identifies freedom with
disorder. In its place they have another concept — that of jus-
tice. Even this is destructive, however, for its essential prin-
ciple is: nobody must be better off than myself. With
frightening plausibility Amalrik sketches our future: a linger-
ing, unsuccessful war with China, a growth in the centrifugal
force of local nationalisms, growing economic difficulties,
especially over the provision of food, destructive and vicious
outbursts of popular discontent and finally the collapse of
Russia and its disintegration into smaller parts. He even fore-
casts when our eleven hundred years of history will come to
an end — sometime during the 1980s.

So that is Amalrik’s answer to our question: Russia is dead

alone can they endow succeeding human generations with all their vitality
and organic drive, as nature herself ordained in creating them. Only a nation
strong in this belief has the right to a higher life.” Dostoyevsky, The Diary of
a Writer, January 1877, Chapter I.

2. A. Amalrik. Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? He paid for his
thoughts with his freedom. [See Andrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Sur-
vive until 1984? (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). — Trans.]

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and about to decompose. Well, great states have indeed
perished before, and our feelings of desperation and inner
protest at the verdict on Russia do not mean that it is unjust.
But these feelings urge us to accept the verdict only after
rejecting all the alternatives and examining all the possible
ways forward. And this is what Amalrik’s book does not seem
to do. He can say in one sentence that the Russians’ idea of
justice has turned into hatred of anything that is in the least
individual or excellent, and in the next that Russians are
prepared to die at the stake for justice — two statements
which obviously do not hang together. It strikes me that the
idea of justice as a force capable of influencing history is
alien to Amalrik, that it lies on a different plane from the one
he is accustomed to think in.

The value of his book, as I see it, is that it has followed one
possibility through to its logical end, that it has exhausted
one train of thought. If you look at history as the product of
the interaction of economic factors, or from the point of view
of the interplay of the interests of different social groups and
individuals, and the rights that guarantee these interests,
then Russia indeed has no future — Amalrik’s arguments are
unanswerable.

But there are, after all, historical processes that depend on
quite other principles. We, of all people, should not overlook
the example of the October revolution. Nobody had a better
nose than Lenin for the tiniest ripples of social and class
forces, yet a few days before the February rising he saw no
prospects of a socialist revolution, arguing persuasively in a
letter to some Swiss workers that such a revolution could not
succeed in Russia, the most bourgeois-minded country in
Europe.

Four hundred years earlier, for that matter, when an un-
known monk named Luther challenged the greatest force in
the world at that time, he seemed to be going counter to all
social and historical laws.

It is with this in mind that I should like to reexamine Rus-
sia’s future. Medicine has much to teach us about disease and
death, but religion knows resurrection also. For the mysteri-

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ous words of I Corinthians 15:21 are nowhere more applica-
ble than in the life of nations: “For since by man came death ,
by man came also the resurrection of the dead.”

TWO

These words seem addressed directly to us, showing us the
way. If neither class, nor party, nor a fortunate combination
of forces on the world political stage can halt the shadow of
death descending on Russia, then it can only be done by
man, through the efforts of individual human beings.

But is it not hopeless for men to endeavor to arrest the in-
evitable action of historical laws? This is a most serious ob-
jection, which must be tackled first of all.

How many generations have now been brought up to be-
lieve from childhood that the individual is powerless to influ-
ence the course of history, that history is predetermined by
the impersonal factors of economics and production? So
thoroughly indoctrinated are we with this idea that it never
occurs to us to subject it to intellectual scrutiny. One might
think it was impossible to understand the nature of the laws
of history without first knowing what those laws were, but in
all sciences laws are tested by comparison and experiment.

Let us perform just one experiment. Let us choose as our
subject a law which seemed so self-evident to those who
formulated it that they dubbed it the “iron” law. This was the
“iron law of wages,” according to which under the capitalist
method of production a worker's wage was always equivalent
to the minimum necessary to sustain life. Its corollary was
the inevitable total impoverishment of the proletariat. Any
reference to this prophecy now, and to others like it, is em-
barrassing. Not only are the workers of Western Europe and
America getting continuously richer, but thanks to strikes and
trade-union policy they receive far more than their labor is
strictly worth, which is causing serious problems. Similarly
with all the other prophecies made by these oracles — of rev-
olution beginning in the most highly industrialized coun-

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tries, of the collapse of capitalism under the impact of
repeated periodic crises, of the withering away of the state
under socialism, of the replacement of armies by a militia, of
the abolition of specialization that distorts the human person-
ality, of the impossibility of war between socialist coun-
tries — wherever you look, it’s the same picture. Only one
conclusion is possible — that there is no truth in these
theories. Their authors either completely failed to under-
stand the laws of history, or else did not say what they really
thought.

But now let us look at their actions. The October revolu-
tion was made by people who were fanatically convinced
that history could be manipulated, that even a small group of
people could change its course so long as they knew how to
go about it. In this sense October crystallized the character of
the twentieth century. The idea that power is there for the
taking spread all over the world, and this concept was really
borne out by experience — in Italy, Germany, Latin America,
China and Africa. Yet the men who began this whole move-
ment preached that the individual is powerless before the ir-
resistible laws of history. What a strange contradiction!

Judged by their actions rather than their words, the men
who made the revolution believed that human personality,
together with such attributes as conscience, self-respect, love
for others and for one’s country, was the greatest force in his-
tory. How much energy was expended in paralyzing this
force, in propagating the idea that morality, ethics, kindness
or patriotism were ridiculous, unscientific, outmoded con-
cepts, that man’s only motivation was self-interest and the in-
terest of the group, class or party to which he belonged. This
propaganda was no mere literary exercise: when the soldier,
the defender of the fatherland, deserted the front and turned
his bayonet against his neighbor (the landowner), it served
the same end.

And how well those efforts paid offl Here is the clue to the
mystery of the abject submission which would otherwise be
inexplicable: in order to fight for your life, fear is not
enough — you need to have preserved your moral strength as

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well. Those who attended political meetings during the day
to vote for the execution of the accused at the Industrial
party 3 trial would sit waiting for their own arrest at night.
The results were in direct proportion to the victim’s commit-
ment to this philosophy: the peasants, though broken in
spirit, endeavored to resist and revolt, while Old Bolsheviks
went to the camps with revolutionary songs on their lips and
received their bullets in the cellar with cries of “Long Live
Stalin!”

Denying the existence of historical laws is tantamount to
refusing to understand history itself. But is it credible that
history should be governed by laws that work like clock-
work? Even in quantum mechanics it is considered theoreti-
cally impossible to eliminate the influence of the observer on
what is being observed. History’s laws must, of course, take
account of a fundamental element — the influence of human
beings and their free will. Politicians and all great historians
have always taken this for granted. And at every turn of his-
tory, wherever it has led mankind — whether to the victory
of Christianity or the October revolution — the decision has
always been in the hands of men and depended on their free
will.

THREE

The fact that in principle men can influence the course of
history does not of course mean that we in our country can do
so now. Each one of us is not merely an individual, but also a
small component in a vast machine, which is subject to its
own laws and makes demands on its components that take no
account of their free will or their immortal souls. Once upon
a time J. V. Stalin whimsically referred to us all as “cogs” and
even proposed a toast to the health of the “cogs.” Have the

3. The name of a nonexistent underground party alleged to have been
founded by industrial managers. It was the pretext for one of the first big
show trials in 1930. See also note 13 on page 240. — Trans.

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cogs strength enough left in their souls to withstand the pres-
sure of the machine?

I am certain the strength is there, that anyone who wishes
can take the first steps toward his liberation now, and that the
obstacles in the way are not outside us, but within — in our
lifelong habits.

Let us try to understand the concrete ways in which our
freedom is circumscribed. Few people nowadays, and then
only rarely, have to take decisions for which they might have
to pay with their lives or their liberty. But at every step life
presents us with choices touching upon one particular ques-
tion, and that is whether to give in to force a little, to bow to
pressure, or to stand our ground and straighten our backs. We
are constantly being urged to join the party — should we
join? We are pressed to become party agitators — so we par-
ticipate in the infantile charade of elections that give us no
alternatives? A child is bom — do we christen him in
church? We have been given an interesting samizdat article
to read — do we type a copy for ourselves, do we pass it on to
others to read? We are invited to a meeting where neither
speaker nor audience believes a word of what is being
said — do we go? We are asked to support someone who is
being unjustly persecuted — do we sign a letter in his de-
fense? Even the boldest action in these cases no longer en-
tails imprisonment or the permanent loss of one’s job. The
risk is merely one of official displeasure, the loss of regular
promotion and pay raises, no new television set, no bigger
apartment, no official trip abroad.

A process of barter takes place in which we pay with parts
of our own soul that are essential to its health and survival.
Our sense of self-respect and self-confidence is replaced by
ruthless hostility toward others and the cunning mentality of
the slave. Worst of all, life loses its aura of happiness and
meaningful purpose. The price we pay is sterility in art and
science, lives wasted on week-long vigils in endless queues
for objects that nobody wants, and unprecedented alcoholism
unheard of elsewhere on this planet and destroying not only

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this generation but the genes of descendants yet unborn.

What does life offer us in exchange? As a rule the bare
necessities that keep starvation at bay and enable us to feed
the children. These are not in question. What is, then? I
would say: values that do not lie in the material sphere.
Sometimes this is quite obvious, sometimes less so. A medal,
for example, neither feeds you nor keeps you warm. A large
and expensive automobile soon falls apart on our roads, park-
ing in the cities is more difficult, and with speed limited by
law you get to your destination no quicker than in the cheap-
est vehicle. A trip abroad can be important for a budding en-
gineer’s or scientist’s career, but its attraction is far greater
than its usefulness. An expensive new suit keeps you no
warmer than an old one patched at the elbows. And so on.
None of these values has a consumer significance, their
meaning is quite different: they show a man’s place in the hi-
erarchy of surrounding society. Like paper money, they have
no value in themselves, but are symbols of something that
men value highly.

Evidently any society, in order to exist, has to arrange its
members in some sort of hierarchy. The hierarchy of human
society reflects that society’s outlook on life. The people most
skilled in the activities that are highly regarded by society
possess the greatest authority. Society endows such people
with symbols that underline their authority — nose ring,
gold-braided uniform or Chaika 4 automobile. These symbols
acquire an exceptional attraction for the members of that so-
ciety, persuading them to behave in the way society prefers.

It is this force that is the greatest limiting factor on our
present freedom. It springs not from machine guns or barbed
wire, but from our own opinions, from our inward, unques-
tioning acceptance of the hierarchy of surrounding society,
from our assumption that a high position in it really matters.
Like a hen fascinated by the chalk line the hypnotist draws
before her, we are petrified because we believe our chains to

4. The larger and more expensive of the two types of automobile produced
by the indigenous Soviet auto industry. It is commonly used to carry top-
ranking party bureaucrats and government officials. — Trans.

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be real. The road to freedom begins within ourselves, when
we stop clawing our way up the rungs of the career ladder or
of quasi-affluence. And just as we sacrifice the best part of
our souls in pursuit of these will-o’-the-wisps, so when we
give them up shall we find the real meaning of life.

This is a feasible way out. Christianity, which originated
just when the ancient world was reaching its apogee, ac-
cepted neither the ancient world’s philosophy nor its ac-
knowledged hierarchy, and this was one of the secrets of its
invincibility. In our time too there exist small circles measur-
ing their values by entirely different standards from those of
the world outside. Once this movement is established and
broadly based, we shall gain a freedom that we cannot even
begin to contemplate at this moment.

One dangerous aspect of this approach is its negative char-
acter. If life asks a man to sacrifice everything he holds most
dear in exchange for a sham, for pieces of paper with a price
written on them but corresponding to no real value, then the
practical conclusions he should draw from this realization are
obvious: he should refuse this exchange, turn aside from this
path. But since all life in our country and all its manifesta-
tions are in the hands of the state, would not a painter, for ex-
ample, in accepting this view, have to give up painting, a
scientist to give up his science? Would we not end by refus-
ing to take an active part in life itself and in any cultural ac-
tivities?

People everywhere in the world tend to speak of contem-
porary culture as becoming more and more antihuman, say-
ing there is no room for man in it any more, and there is a
growing retreat from culture as a reaction against this trend.
That is why our question has particular significance and rele-
vance, not only for the fate of the individual in modem in-
dustrial society, but also for the future of culture.

In answering it we must remember that here we are deal-
ing only with a general principle. In practice everyone takes
stock of his own strength and decides how far he can go
along this path. All we have to determine is whether or not
this general principle is contrary to culture, whether or not it

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leads us away from a field in which man has an obligation to
labor.

Let us take examples from several fields of endeavor. It is
natural to begin with literature, since it has always played a
special part in Russian life. The concept of the writer as a
teacher, able to perceive the truth that remains hidden from
others, is purely Russian and peculiar to our people.

It is in literature that our question can be posed in its
clearest form. To climb the hierarchical ladder the writer
generally has to perform functions that are diametrically op-
posed to the goals of literature: to conceal and pervert the
truth instead of seeking it. Hence the appearance of that anti-
literature glorifying Stalin, Dzerzhinsky and Yezhov, the
Cheka , 5 the White Sea-Baltic Canal , 6 collectivization, the
persecution of “enemies of the people,” and the denuncia-
tions of parents by their children. In these circumstances the
question — can one be a writer outside this organiza-
tion? — hardly arises, for literature can only survive by keep-
ing its distance from all this. And indeed everything
beautiful, truthful and profound that has been created in our
time was created by people whom fate, however cruel the
means, nonetheless protected from being drawn into this
zone which meant death to literature.

In the human sciences — philosophy, history and sociol-
ogy — the picture is similar. The only difference is that even
fewer people have managed to fight their way out of anti-
science than out of antiliterature. As for the natural sciences,
it would seem that here we have no freedom of choice at all.
In order to become a scientist one has to study at university,
gain a higher degree, have access to laboratories, accelerators
and computers. But here too it is far from being so simple.
The sheer scale, the superorganized character of modem
science has been its misfortune, even its curse. There are so
many scientists and their output is so great that it is impossi-

5. The Cheka was the original name of the Soviet secret police (1917-1922),
whose first chief was Felix E. Dzerzhinsky. Nikolai I. Yezhov was chief of
the secret police (when it was known as the NKVD), 1936-1938. — Trans.

6. The White Sea-Baltic Canal was built with slave labor from Stalin’s labor
camps. — T rans.

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ble to read all the publications even in one narrow specialty.
The scientist’s horizon dwindles to a pinpoint and he ex-
hausts himself trying to keep abreast of his countless compet-
itors. God’s design, the divine beauty of truth as revealed in
science, gives way to a bundle of petty technical problems.
Science becomes a race, millions speed along without the
least idea of where they are going. There is still satisfaction
in this race for the few with vision, who can see a few steps
ahead, but the vast majority see nothing but the heels of the
one immediately in front, feel nothing but the panting breath
of the one treading on their heels behind.

But even if it were possible to surmount the fact that
science no longer brings the satisfaction it is capable of giv-
ing, that it deforms those who practice it, there are other
reasons why it cannot go on the same way indefinitely. The
output of science is now doubling every ten to fifteen years,
the number of scientists is growing correspondingly, and
spending on science is rising at almost the same rate. This
process has been going on for two hundred to two hundred
fifty years, but now it is clear that it cannot go on much
longer — for by the end of this century spending on science
would exceed the whole of society’s gross product. In prac-
tice, of course, insuperable difficulties will arise long before
then — probably in the 1980s (remember Amalrik!). In other
words, development in this direction is doomed and the only
question that remains is whether science can switch to an-
other way, whereby the discovery of the truth demands nei-
ther millions of men nor billions of money, the way trodden
by Archimedes and Galileo and Mendel. That is the fun-
damental problem now, science’s life-and-death question. It
will hardly be solved by those already trapped like squirrels
in its treadmill. Our hopes must rest on those who have not
yet been caught in its momentum.

Finally, it is impossible not to mention that sphere of cul-
tural activity that is perhaps more important than any other
for the healthy life of a nation — religion. For hundreds of
thousands of years it was the noblest and most powerful mo-
tive force of mankind, yet in the space of a few decades we

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have broken with it, though not because we have found
something to take its place or something nobler. One can
judge from the results how the nation’s soul becomes crip-
pled, not only in our own country but also in others, from
Germany to China, where the state has tried to wrench the
people away from religion. The entire history of mankind
consists of brutalities, but never before has violence paraded
itself so brazenly, declaring itself to be the benevolent tool of
history’s laws, and never before, therefore, has such a pitch
of technical perfection been reached in turning man into
putty in the hands of his fellowmen as in these countries in
recent times.

Nietzsche’s literary phrase “God is dead!” has become a
reality in our country and by now the third generation is liv-
ing in a terrifying world without God.

Here, I would say, is the key to the whole question: it is
the efforts applied in this sphere that will determine the life,
death or resurrection of Russia. This most vital of all the
fields of activity for our people will require hundreds of thou-
sands of hands and heads (let us recall that there were three
hundred thousand priests in Russia before the revolution).
And it goes without saying that only people who renounce
the system of values offered by our present life can work in
this field.

Does it not follow then that this path, far from leading us
away from culture, will actually help us to find those most es-
sential and most hidden paths which would otherwise be in-
visible?

FOUR

And so it turns out that we are no longer hopelessly fet-
tered and bound, that there is a road that leads to freedom.
But in order to follow it we must understand that it will
require the renunciation of things which actually have no
worth.

Thus we may take the first and perhaps most precious steps

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toward freedom — our own and Russia’s. But we must not
close our eyes to the fact that they are no more than the first
steps. One may be imprisoned even for typing a copy of some
samizdat work, let alone for circulating one’s own work in it.
But nothing matters more at the present time than joining
forces to debate the vital issues of our country’s future — for
no ideas can develop in isolation, undebated. Similar penal-
ties threaten expressions of religious belief, and especially
religious movements unwilling to submit to a convoluted sys-
tem of repressive regulations. Any act of persecution causes
revulsion and arouses protest, which in turn leads to more
persecution. But when it comes to what might seem to be
perfectly natural actions — distributing pamphlets or demon-
strating in support of an arrested person — risk is not the
word, imprisonment is a certainty. And loss of employment,
especially if one has a wife and children to support, exile to
Siberia, a concentration-camp sentence, or finally the night-
mare of indefinite confinement in an insane asylum — none
of these can be called sham sacrifices.

So we conclude: Russia’s fate is in our hands, it depends
on the personal efforts of each and every one of us. But the
essential contributions to the cause can be made only
through sacrifice.

This might seem a misfortune, but in fact it is an irresist-
ible weapon and a source of unlimited power. Few social
forces act so powerfully on people as the drive for self-
sacrifice in pursuit of higher ideals. It may not always be so,
but at decisive periods in history sacrifice acquires a glamour
that cannot be explained by any theory of sociology. Experi-
enced politicians know this fact empirically and take advan-
tage of it: calls for sacrifice generally meet with a ready
response among the people. One reason why the revolution
succeeded in our country was undoubtedly the fact that only
in revolutionary activity could the intelligentsia find an out-
let for their yearning for great deeds and sacrifice. What
theoretician would have forecast the heroic deeds of the last
war? For the outcome of the war was determined by peasants
who had already borne the heaviest burdens. How else can

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this miracle be explained except by the feet that the war en-
abled people to stand up straight and hold their heads high,
that it opened the way to honest, voluntary self-sacrifice,
which life had hitherto denied them.

We know how joyfully the early Christians sacrificed them-
selves. So strong was this urge that many fathers of the
Church warned against the search for a martyr’s crown and
taught that martyrdom is sacred only when not actively pur-
sued but waited for. This comparison, alas, has little rele-
vance for us. Of all Russia’s sorrows, perhaps the greatest is
that she still lives (or dies) without faith. Even if a cure is
possible, the task is infinitely difficult; it will take every
ounce of our energy, and it will scarcely be accomplished
quickly. But there is another spiritual state, akin to faith and
much more accessible to us: readiness for sacrifice. The con-
cept of sacrifice has always been mysteriously linked with
religion. Sacrifice offers the same sense of uplift and joy and
gives a meaning to life. If more than just a few individuals
can rise to the pitch where they are ready to sacrifice them-
selves, souls will be cleansed and the soil prepared for re-
ligion to grow in.

Sacrifice can give us the strength to overcome the many ob-
stacles in Russia’s path — on one condition: that such a path
still exists. Which brings us back to the question with which
we began this article: what is the purpose of Russia’s exis-
tence now, and has she still a historic mission?

It is hard to believe that any country has ever suffered such
a multitude of catastrophes as has been unleashed on Russia
during the last half century. Surely they cannot have been
senseless and in vain? Involuntarily one looks for some pur-
pose in them, thinking that they must have been preparing us
for something. So often in the life of a man or a people, suf-
fering is the path to higher things. Indeed, Russia’s present
position is unique: the misfortunes heaped upon us have
blotted out all the simple, easily discernible paths, forcing us
to search for the one essential and untrivial path that can lead
to our (and perhaps not only Russia’s) salvation. We have al-
ready seen a few examples. It is incomparably easier for a

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budding scientist in the West to get onto the conveyor belt of
modem science: he has no need to pretend to be fulfilling
some social task, nor to speak against his conscience at ideo-
logical seminars, while scientific information is far more ac-
cessible to him and international contacts far easier. Here, by
contrast, everything conspires to divert him from this fatal
path.

Many profound thoughts have been expressed, beginning
with Plato, about the need for the best individuals, the elite
of the aristocracy, to rule the people. But these systems have
always led to the destruction of the profoundest and most
beautiful attributes of the soul, and, instead of elevating,
have degraded both the members of the elite and those they
ruled. Is this not because the wrong method of rule was indi-
cated? For it should really be effected not through power but
through sacrifice. In other countries and at other times this
may not seem so obvious, but for us this method of serving
the people is the only one. Destiny has brought us to this and
enabled us to taste these truths with our bodies and our
blood, whereas it has not been revealed to other nations half
so clearly . 7

It has often been said that Russia cannot save herself alone
and solve only her own private problems. The English, while
maintaining the slave trade and holding India in bondage,
were able to build what was then the freest society in the
world. We cannot do this, and have proved the converse at
least: however great the misfortunes that Russia has brought
on other peoples, she has always brought even greater ones
on her own.

The whole of mankind has now entered a blind alley. It
has become clear that a civilization founded on the ideology
of “progress” gives rise to contradictions that that civilization
cannot resolve. And it seems to me that the path to Russia’s

7. Let us take a more particular example, such as the method of dissemi-
nating literature. For us, samizdat is the only possibility, but in principle it
is also the ideal way: the distribution of works is independent of both the
censor and the advertiser. With the aid of modem technology this method
can be made fully effective. But for the West it would be difficult to give up
existing methods, which in any case have worked pretty well so far.

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rebirth is the same as the path that will enable man to find a
way out of his blind alley, to find salvation from the senseless
race of industrial society, the cult of power and the darkness
of unbelief. We were the first to reach this vantage point,
whence the uniqueness of this path became visible, and it is
now up to us to set foot on it and point the way to others.
This is my idea of Russia’s possible mission, the purpose
which can justify her future existence.

The past half century has enriched us with experience that
no other country has yet acquired. One of religion’s most an-
cient ideas is that in order to acquire supernatural power, one
must visit another world, one must pass through death. That
is how soothsayers and prophets are said to have arisen: “I
lay as a corpse in the wilderness and the voice of God cried
out to me . . .”

This is now Russia’s position. She has passed through
death and may hear the voice of God. But God makes history
through men, and it is we, every one of us, who may hear His
voice. Or, of course, we may not hear it. And remain as
corpses in the wilderness that will cover the ruins of
Russia.

*94

Notes on Contributors

Mikhail Agursky (bom 1933) is the son of an American
Communist who went to the Soviet Union and was shot in
Stalin’s great purge of 1937. He is a cyberneticist by profes-
sion, but was deprived of all employment after applying to
emigrate to Israel. He is the author of a number of samizdat
essays and of open letters in defense of Solzhenitsyn and
Sakharov.

Evgeny Barabanov (bom 1943) is an art historian who for-
merly worked for the publishing house Iskusstvo (Art) and its
associated journal, Dekorativnoye iskusstvo (Decorative Art).
He was deprived of his post in September 1973 when placed
under investigation by the KGB for sending copies of the
clandestine journal Chronicle of Current Events, and un-
published material on Russian religious and cultural life, to
the West. He admitted the charges, saying that he considered
it his duty to save the Russian cultural heritage from destruc-
tion and that there was nothing illegal in sending information
out of the country. In 1974 he was refused permission to
emigrate.

Vadim Borisov (bom 1945) is a historian who studied at

295

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Moscow University and the Institute of History of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences. He was recently prevented from pre-
senting his doctoral thesis on Russian Church history of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and has been deprived of
all employment.

F. Korsakov and A. B. are the pseudonyms of authors for
whom it would be dangerous to reveal their identities at the
present time.

IGOR Shafarevich (bom 1923), the author of three essays in the
present collection and its coeditor, is a mathematician and al-
gebraist of world repute who taught at Moscow University until
his connection was terminated after the publication of this work.
A former laureate of the Lenin Prize, he is credited as having
discovered the law of reciprocity. His The Socialist Phenomenon was
published in Russian in Paris in 1975 and appeared in the United
States in 1980.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (bom 1918) is a Nobel Laureate for
literature. He fought in World War II, and was imprisoned in
various labor camps because of his outspoken criticism of the
Soviet regime. Now living in exile in Vermont, Solzhenitsyn is
world famous as both a literary and a political figure.

296

Index

“A.B (biography), 296
“abstinence,” concept of, 149-150
advertising. See mass media
Afghani, Jamal ed-Din al-: quoted, 28
Agursky, Mikhail (biography), 295
Albania, 29, 112-113
Albigensians, 40
alcoholism, 285

Aleksei Mikhailovich, tsar of Russia,
n6n.2, 159

Alexander II, tsar of Russia, 157n.11
Alexander III, tsar of Russia, 1330.15
Alexius, Patriarch, 175, 176
Altayev (pseudonym), 242, 264;

quoted, 243-244 , 254, 260
Amalrik, Andrei, 269, 280-281, 289
Ambrose, Father, 157m 10
American Machinist (periodical), 82
Amin, Idi, 112

Anarchism, founding of, 62n.i2
Antichrist, the, 194
anti-Semitism, 197
Apostolic Brethren, 36, 39
Arab-Israeli conflict, 6
Archipelago, 118, 164
Armenian massacres, 111
arms and armaments, 80; and
“militarization” of economy, 48,
56-57; USSR and, 70, 1390.17
art. See culture

asceticism, i57n.8, n.9, 182-183,
184-185

Assembly (Veche) (journal), 101
atheism, 29, 125, 155, 175, 189; intel-
ligentsia and, 231; Marx and, 30; at
tsarism’s fall, 178-179. See also re-
ligion

atomic war, 7

Augustine, St.: quoted, 105
Austria-Hungary, 91, 134
authoritarian system, 23-25, 79
automation. See technology
Avvakum, Archpriest, 174

Bakunin, Mikhail: quoted, 62-63
Barabanov, Evgeny (biography), 295
barter system, 48
Batory, Stefan, 131
Bebel, August: quoted, 59
Belinsky, Vissarion G., 156, 245
Berdyayev, Nikolai A., v, vi, vii, 188,
2oin.7, 235-236; quoted, 55, 271
Bible, quotations from, 148, 152, 154,
162-170 passim), 203-209 (pas-
sim), 212, 282

Bibles, demand for, 155-156
birth control, 51-52. See also popula-
tion

Blok, Alexander, 156, 214
Bolshevism: defined, 125, 126; inter-

*9 7

INDEX

Bolshevism (< cont .)
national forces and, 126-127; "Na-
tional,” 120; and “Old Bolsheviks,”
284

Borisov, Vadim (biography), 295-296
"Borotbists,” 98
Botticelli, Sandro, 189
Brandt, Willy, 74, 114
British Empire, 73, 91, m-ii2, 262,
293

Buddhism, 64

Bulgakov, Sergei, v, vi, 59, 148,
2om.7; Karl Marx as a Religious
Type , 30; quoted, 20, 121, 197, 236,
271

bureaucracy, 42, 85, 280; and Russian
Church, 173, 177; "Union of the
Equal” and, 43^44
Byelorussia, 132, 133
Byzantium, 174, 178, 184

Cadets (Constitutional Democratic
party), 21, i03n.8, 2230.21
Campanella, Tommaso, 42, 43, 46, 52;

City of the Sun , 41
capitalism, 282-283; vs. socialism,
6-8, 29, 67-87

"catching up,” 3, 7, 99, 140. See also
technology
Catharists, 36, 40

Catholic Church. See Church, the;

Russian Orthodox Church
censorship, 44, 86; Index on, 80. See
also mass media; samizdat
Central Committee, 48, 180
Chaadayev, P. Y., 150; quoted, 162,
163

Chaika (automobile), 286
Cheka. See secret police
Chekhov, Anton, 189
Chelnov (pseudonym): quoted, 125,
126, 249, 25 7

Childe, Gordon: What Happened in
History, quoted, 36
children. See family
China, 9, 52, 79, 88, 134, 280, 290; as
world power, 74, 216
Christ, 43, 59, 187, 209; search for,
151, 183; teachings of, 24, 181-182,
204

Christianity, 287; and "abstinence”
concept, 149-150; and asceticism,
I57n£, n.9, 182-183, 184-185;
and culture, 174-175, 188-189;
defined, 208; duality of, 181, 188;
and hell, concept of, 188; and his-
tory, 174, 185; ideology and, 180,
185, 192; and Kingdom of God,
181-184, 188, 191; and the Mass,
179-180, 184, 191; and personality,
203-212, 225; Poland and, 131,
133; and responsibility, 185, 213,
228; and sacrament of confession,
153-154; and sacrifice, 176, 292;
and "speaking in tongues,” 209,
263; and "universalism,” 203 (see
also universalism); Western "inno-
vations” in, 186. See also Church,
the; religion; Russian Orthodox
Church

Chronicle of Current Events, 295
Chukovskaya, Lydia, 251
Chukovsky, Komei, 25 m. 18
Church, die: Catholic, 29, 39; de-
struction of, 11, 39, 155, 238; and
"godless five-year plan,” 49; "I
Myself” and, 158-161; intelligen-
tsia and, 155-157* 177* 19^, *7i;
reality of, 172-173; return to,
145-146, 153-161, 173, 191-193;
and search for Truth, 166-171 . 174,
187; the state and, 96-97, 155,
173-174* 175-181; in totalitarian
society, 177-179. See also Chris-
tianity; religion; Russian Orthodox
Church

civil rights, 118-11904
class struggle, 81, 215-216. See also
people, the
coexistence, 9-14
collectivization, 11, 95, 2 88
colonialism, 93-98, 111-112. See also
nationalism

Comintern (Third International),
124n.11

communes, 85; and industry, 82-83
communism, 12, 47-48, 127, 243-244
Communist Manifesto, The, 28, 29,
30, 49, 50

Communist party, 98, i23n.io,
124n.11

INDEX

Communist Sverdlov Institute
(“Sverdlovka”), 51
competition, 71, 73
computerization. See technology
conglomerates, 69-70
conservation. See natural resources
Constantine I (the Great), 178
Constantius I, Roman emperor, 178
Constitution, 179

Constitutional Democratic party. See
Cadets

consumption, 68-69, 77, 81-84; of
natural resources, 72-73, 108
convergence, 13, 17, 217, 222
Council for Religious Affairs, 175
Cuba, 127

culture, 100; “antihuman” 287-288;
Christianity and, 174-175, 188-
190; death of, 42, 43, 94, 95,
216; intelligentsia and, i99n.6,
2i5n.i7, 255-256, 258-259, 261;
under oppression, 57, 255-256; sci-
ence and, 220-221, 255-256

Dal, V.: quoted, 235, 242
Darwin, Charles, 201
death, socialism and, 61-64
Declaration of the Rights of Man, 8
defense, 142-143
de Gaulle, Charles, 74
democratic system, 24, 216; faults of,
22, 75-80; vs. totalitarian society,
80, 85; and “tyranny of majority,”
76, 219

deportation. See population
De Profundis (anthology), vii, 161
Deschamps, Leger Marie, 43; The
True System, 42
Deutscher, I., 12

dictatorships. See totalitarian society
Diderot, Denis: Supplement to the
“Journey” of Bougainville, 42
divorce. See marriage
Dolcino (leader of Patarene move-
ment), 64

Dollinger, I. von: quoted, 40
Dostoyevsky, F. M., 90, 103, 156,
i57n.io, 162, 174, 189, 20in.7,2i4,
223, 234; Diary of a Writer, 109,
233, 279-2800.1; “A Noble Person-
ality,” 56; The Possessed, 53-54,

148, i55n.2; quoted, 22, 53~54, 56,
109, 147-148, 202, 204, 269,
279-2800.1

DuMek, Alexander, 258
Dzerzhinsky, Felix E., 288

ecology. See natural resources
economy: colonialism and, 95; ex-
pansion and, 138; “militarization”
of, 48, 56-57; NEP, 48; and stan-
dard of living, 71, 94, 217, 224; and
unemployment, 71, 238. See also
capitalism; industry; socialism
ecumenism, 159. See also religion
education, 53“54, 140, 242, 246
Egypt, Old Kingdom of, 35-36, 53
“elite.” See intelligentsia
Engels, Friedrich, 28; The Origin of
the Family, Private Property and
the State , 49; quoted, 63^13,
65m 14

England. See British Empire
Enlightenment, the, 157, 189; “Age
of,” 37

equality, 56; and personality, 200-
201, 211; and religion, 55, 200;
“Shigalyovism,” 53-54; and “The
Union of the Equal,” 43^44, 55
Ermogen, Archbishop, 175
Eshilman, Nikolai, 175
Estonia, 95, 98-99, 102, 133
Eucharist, the, 183, 185

family: and birth control, 51-52; and
children denouncing parents, 288;
destruction of, 30-31, 38-42, 44,
45-46, 49-50, 53, 56-57; intel-
ligentsia and, 240, 249; Lenin on,
50; Marxist views on, 49-52, 54-55;
Volfson on, 49-50, 51; and wife-
sharing, 30, 39-40, 44, 45, 54- See
also marriage

fashion and obsolescence, 68-69. See
also consumption
Fedotov, G.: quoted, 235
Fenelon, Francois, 42
Feuerbach, Ludwig A., 30
Fichte, J. G.: quoted, i98n.5
First Circle, The (Solzhenitsyn), 272
Florensky, Father Pavel, 157, 169,

*99

INDEX

Florensky, Father Pavel ( cont .)
20in.7; The Pillar and Ground of
the Truth f quoted, 151
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de:
The Republic of Philosophers , 42
foreign policy (USSR), 6, 7-8; vs.

internal problems, 8-9, 139-142
forgiveness. See repentance, national
Fourastier, Jean: quoted, 220-221
Fourier, Charles, 65, 66; quoted, 59,

63

France, 73, 74, 75, m
Frank, Semyon, v, 148, 2om.7
freedom, 18, 147, 217, 224, 280; abuse
of democratic, 75-77; curbs on, 285,
286-287; definition of, 136; of ex-
pression, 4-5, 9, 86-87 (see also
censorship); intelligentsia and, 79,
248, 255; Marxist concept of, 136;
and nationality, 211-212; People's
Freedom party, 21 ; political, 22-25,
198; sacrifice and, 291, 293; and
self-limitation, i35“ 1 38
Freud, Sigmund, 64, 201

Galbraith, John Kenneth, 69-70; The
New Industrial State , quoted, 84
Germany and Germans, 73, 74, 89,
125, 262, 290; and repentance,
91-92, 1 14. See also Nazi Germany
Gershenzon, M., v, vi
“godless five-year plan,” 49. See also
Church, the; religion
Goethe, Johann W. von, 265
Gogol, Nikolai, 100, is6n.5, 174, 189,
234, 245m 17
Golden Horde, 133
Golubov, K.: quoted, 136
Gorsky (pseudonym), 121, 127, 264;
quoted, 122, 123, 124, 260, 261,
262-263

GPU. See secret police
Granovsky, Timofei, 245; quoted,

2150.15

Gregory, St. (the Theologian), 170
Gregory of Nyssa, St., 208
Gregory Sinaiticus, St., 161
Griboyedov, Alexander, i48n.3
guilt, historical. See repentance, na-
tional

Gulag Archipelago , The (Solzheni-
tsyn), 164

“happiness” as aim, 20-21, 22
Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard von,
64

hell, concept of, 188. See also Chris-
tianity

Herald of the Russian Student Chris-
tian Movement (Yestnik Russkogo
Khristianskogo Studencheskogo
Dvizhenia ) (JRSKD). See Vestnik
RSKD

heresies. See religion
Herzen, Alexander, 130, 136; quoted,
205, 207, 2190.19

history: Christianity and, 174, 185;
destruction and rewriting of, 94, 96,
127, 216, 222; and historical mem-
ory, 211, 220, 222; influences on,
2i5n.i5, 281, 282-284; Western,
compared, 128

Hitler, Adolf, and Hiderism, 5, 130
Holy Family , The (Marx), 30, 55
humanism, 198; Dostoyevsky on,
202; and human rights, 200-201;
rationalist, 199-202, 213. See also
personality
Huxley, Aldous, 57

Ibo nation (Nigeria), 92
idealism vs. positivism, 144-150, 189
ideology, 186; and the Church, 180,
185, 192; coexistence and, 9-14;
nationalism as, 225-227; socialism
as, see socialism
Incas, empire of, 33-35* 45
Index on Censorship , 80
individuality: bureaucracy and, 44;
“equality” and, 53-54; "I Myself’
and the Church, 158-161; vs. per-
sonality, 208-^12; and property, 54,
138 .See also nationalism; personal-
ity

“Industrial Party” trial, 240, 284
industry: communes and, 82-83;
computerization and automation
in, 82, 84; conglomerates in, 69-70;
as economic base, 67-69, 73,
139-140. See also technology
instinct, 64-66

300

INDEX

Intelligentsia: and culture, 19911.6,

2i5n.i7, 255-^56, 258-259, 261;
and Communism, 243-244; de-
fined, 2i5n.i7, 234-236, 241-245,
269; and democracies, 75; and
elite, 273, 293; and family, 240,
249; faults and virtues of, 230-233,
237 - 239 , 253-255, 270; and free-
dom, 79, 248, 255; “guilt” of, 260;
Landmarks (yekhi ) and, vi, 155,
2i4n.i4, 229-232, 234-237, 243;
Lenin on, 238^9; and “the lie,”
247-249, 253, 258-259, 268, 274-
277; and materialism, 247; and
nationalism, 98, 197-199, 261-264;
vs. people, 214-217, 245-246, 260,
264-266; polarization of, 236;
prerevolutionary, vi-vii, 20-21,
230-233, 241, 243, 247, 250, 260;
and “progressive intellectuals,”
255; and religion, 155-157, 177,
192, 271; and repentance, 114, 232,
244; and revolution, 236-239, 244;
and sacrifice, 256, 272, 273,
274-278, 287, 291; and samizdat,
252-253 ( see also samizdat); “six
temptations” of, 244; and “smatter-
ers,” 242-259, 267-269, 273; state
control and, 240-242, 243-244, 280;
young, and Marxism, 239
internationalism, 15, 91, 216, 262. See
also foreign policy; nationalism
Islam, 96
Israel, 6, 262
Istina (journal), 136
Italy, 29, 75

Ivan IV (the Terrible), tsar of Russia,

115

Japan, “Red Army” in, 30-31

Jesuits, 35, 45

Jews, 197. See also Israel

Job, story of, 162, 164

John the Divine, St., 206

justice, concept of, 280, 281

Justinian I, Byzantine emperor, 178

Kant, Immanuel, 630.13
Karamazov, Ivan (Dostoyevsky
character), 160, 162
Karsavin, L., 2040.9

KGB. See secret police
Khlestakov (Gogol character), 156
Khmelnitsky, Bogdan, 131
Khomyakov, A. S.: quoted, 1960.2
Khrushchev, Nikita, 49
kibbutzim, 83. See also communes
Kirghizians, 88
Kistyakovsky, B. A., v
Klyuchevsky, Vasily, 115
Kollontai, Alexandra: “Relations be-
tween the Sexes and Class Moral-
ity,” quoted, 50

Kolyma (labor camp), 146, 157, 162
Komsomol (League of Young Com-
munists), 123, 240
Korea, 127

Korolenko, V. G.: quoted, 21
Korsakov, F. (biography), 296
Krasnov-Levitin, Anatoly, 175, 203
Kropotkin, Prince Peter, 83
Kryukov, Fyodor, i26n.i2

labor, forced, 48

labor camps, nn.4, 44, i46n.i, 157,
162 288n.6. See also slavery
land. See property
“Land and Liberty,” i36n.i6
Land Code of 1922, 11
Landmarks (Yekhi) (anthology). See
Yekhi (Landmarks)
language: history and, 96-97; nation-
ality and, 262; Poland and, 130,
133; “Russification” of, 94, 102,
130; and “speaking in tongues,”
209, 263

Lao-Tse, philosophy of, 64
Latvia, 95

Latvian riflemen, 98, 126, 133, 263
League of Nations, 132
League of Young Communists. See
Komsomol (League of Young
Communists)

Lenin, V. I., 980.4, 1330.15, 281;
“deviation” from, 10-12; and
Landmarks (Yekhi ), vi; quoted, 28,
50-51, 198, 238; “Ten Theses Con-
cerning Soviet Power,” 50; The
Three Sources and Three Compo-
nents of Marxism, 28
Leontius of Byzantium, 209m 12

301

INDEX

Leontyev, Konstantin, 194, 227;
quoted, 22 8

Lermontov, M. Y., 2450.17
Leskov, Nikolai: quoted, 163
“lie, the,” participation in, 24-25;
intelligentsia and, 247-249, 253,
258-259, 268, 274^277
literature, 115, 174, 288. See also
culture

Lithuania, 132, 133
“Living Church” group, 2380.8
living standard. See standard of living
Lossky, N., 2040.9
Lublin, Union of, 131
Lubyanka prison, 157, 164
Lukacs, G., 12
Luther, Martin, 281

Mably, Due de: Thoughts on the
Condition of Nature , 42
Magnitogorsk, 266
Makary die Great, 170-171
Maklakov, V. A., 103
Mao Tse-tung, 64
Marat, Jean Paul, 125
Marcuse, Herbert: The End of
Utopia , 66

marriage, 38-41, 44, 57; Christianity
and, 203; and divorce, 50, 515 Lenin
on love and, 50-51; Marx on, 51;
and ownership of women, 54. See
also family

Marx, Karl, 28, 201; on family and
marriage, 49-52, 54-55; The Holy
Family , 30, 54-55; Das Kapital ,
239; quoted, 29-30, 51, 54-55, 59>
216

Marxism, 127, 218; as “anachronism,”
81; and class hatred, 81, 215-216;
and freedom, 136; intelligentsia
(young) and, 239; myths of, 6^7; and
religion, 29-30, 55; and “scientific
socialism,” vi, 65-66, 221-222
Mass, the. See Christianity
masses. See intelligentsia; people,
the

mass media, 149; advertising in, 68,
86; censorship of, 80, 86; in democ-
racies, 77; in totalitarian regimes,
78-79

materialism, vi, 38-39, 59-80, 286;

“smatterers” and, 246-247, 258
Medvedev, Roy, 12, 197, 218
Meslier: Testament, 42, 43
Mesopotamia, 31-33, 45, 53
“messianism,” Russian, 96, 121-127
“Metanoia” (“NN”), 121
MGB. See secret police
Michelangelo, 189
Michelet, Jules: quoted, 204-205
migration. See population
Milan, Edict of, 178
militarism, 70, 74

“militarization” of economy, 48,
56-57. See also arms and arma-
ments

Milyukov, Pavel N.,2i4n.i4,223n.2i
“moral heroism,” 14-15
More, Thomas, 42; Utopia, 41
Morelly, 43; The Law of Nature, 42
Mumford, Lewis: The Myth of the
Machine, 53

Munich Agreement of 1938, 73
Muntzer, Thomas, 4on.5

nation, 163, 222; concept of, viii,
205-208; as “corporate” personal-
ity, 205-212, 225-227; defined, 204,
205, 263; guilt and repentance of,
see repentance, national; sym-
pathies and antipathies of, 1 10-1 1 1.
See also nationalism
“National Bolshevism,” 120
nationalism: and “denationaliza-

tion,” 216, 217; and historical
memory, 21 1 ; as ideology, 225-227;
intelligentsia and, 98, 197-199,
261-264; Lenin's dictum on, 198;
and mutual enmity, 90, 100, 101;
and national rebirth of Russia,

196- 228, 263; personality and,

197- 199, 203-212, 213-216, 225-
227; and racial purity, 227; and reli-
gion, 213, 228; Sakharov on, 15;
and serfdom, 226; trend toward,
100, 213; in USSR, 15-16, 88-104,
196-228. See also colonialism; na-
tion

National Socialist party. See Nazi
Germany

natural resources: consumption and

302

INDEX

waste of, 72-73, 108; and mining
industry, 83; and pollution, 252,
266

Nazi Germany, 51-52, 73-74, 75, 79
Nechaev, Sergei: quoted, 60, 62
Nestor the chronicler, 150
Nevsky, Alexander, 267
New Age, 22in.20

New Bearings (Smena Vekh ) (publi-
cation), 229

New Economic Policy (NEP), 48
Nicene Creed, 178
Nicholas I, tsar of Russia, 15004
Nietzsche, Friedrich W., 201, 214
Nigeria, 90, 91, 134, 135
nihilism: Dostoyevsky and, 56n.9; na-
tional, Marxism and, 215-216; and
Russian Nihilists, 98, 99, 157,
i94n.i

Nikon, Patriarch, 116, 1740.2
NKGB, NKVD. See secret police
“NN,” 121; quoted, 122, 125, 126
“Northeast.” See Russian Northeast
Novocherkassk Polytechnic Institute,
274

obrazovanshchina (“smatterers”).
See “smatterers”

obsolescence. See fashion and ob-
solescence

October Revolution. See revolution
Ogarev, Nikolai, 136
Okhotny Ryad, 2isn.i6
“Old Believers.” See Russian Or-
thodox Church

“Open Letter” to Patriarch Alexius
(Eshilman and Yakunin), 175, 176
Optyna, Fathers of, 157
Orthodox Church. See Russian Or-
thodox Church
Orwell, George, 57, 248
ownership. See property

Pakistan, 135
Palach, Jan, 276
Paraguay, 35
Paris, 43

Paris Convention, 157
parliamentary system. See parties,
political

parties, political: elimination of, in
future society, 85; and multiparty
system, 18-19, 20, 22, 76; and re-
pentance, 109; socialism and, 29
Pascal, Blaise: quoted, 171
Patarene movement, 37, 39, 64
patriotism, 9, 120, 197, 262. See also
nationalism
Paul, Apostle, 169, 203
Pavel, Father. See Florensky, Father
Pavel

peaceful coexistence, 9-14
peasants. See people, die
Peasants' War, 4on.5
Pecherin (monk), 163m 16
people, the: and attitude toward
peasants, 261, 264; concept of (and
class hatred), 215-216; intelligen-
tsia vs., 214-217, 245-246, 260,
264-266; and land, 21 (see also
property); “nonexistence” of,
264-269; and peasant uprisings, 11,
4on.5, 123, 284 (see also revolu-
tion); and progress, 221; and reli-
gion, 260-261; and sacrifice,
291-292. See also intelligentsia;
population

People's Freedom party, 21
“People's Will” (militant organiza-
tion), 157

personality: Christianity and, 203-
212, 225; cult, 9; and freedom
of choice, 224; as historical force,
283; and human rights, 200-201; vs.
individuality, 208-212 (see also in-
dividuality); nation as “corporate,”
205-212, 225-227; and national
feeling, 197-199, 203-212, 213-
216, 225-227; and rationalist hu-
manism, 199-202, 213; Russian
people as, 207, 228; science and,
220-222; totalitarianism and, 201
Peter I (the Great), tsar of Russia, 1 16,
141, 165, 213
“piecework,” 15
Pilsudski, Joseph, 132
Pimen, Patriarch, 175-176
Pisarev, D. I., 156, 215
Plato, 41, 46, 52, 293; Republic , 37,
44n.6; and socialist system, 36, 37
pochvenniki (“men of the soil”), 261

303

INDEX

Poland and Poles, 89; eastward ex-
pansion of, 131-133; and religious
persecution, 131, 133; Russian op-
pression of, 129-130; and Union of
Lublin, 131

political parties. See parties, political
Pomerants, G., 197, 248, 264, 272;
quoted, 244-245, 247, 253, 259-263
(passim), 270

population: deportation and migra-
tion, 94, 95, 206-207; explosion and
birth control, 51-52, 141 ; urban, 84
positivism, vi, 144-150, 189
privilege, 6, 17-18
productivity, 81-84
progress, 218-219, 221, 293-294;
freedom vs., 137-138; techno-
logical, see technology
“progressists,” i96n.2
“progressive circles,” 215-216
“progressive intellectuals,” 255
“progressive philosophy,” 218
propaganda, 7, 76, 179, 266, 283
property: abolition of private, 28, 29,
3i, 37-38, 43, 44, 53, 56; common
ownership of, 39-42, 54; and de-
struction of family, 45-48, 54-55
( see also family); and individuality,
54, 138; and peasant longing for
land, 21

punishment, slavery as, 42, 57
purges, Stalinist, vii, 157m 12, *97»
295

Pushkin, A. S., 156, 205,214,245^17,
265; quoted, 144-145, 183

Quiet Flows the Don (Sholokhov),
126

“Red Army” (Trotskyist organization
in Japan), 30-31
Red Guards, 63

“reformists,” 238. See also Russian
Orthodox Church

religion: in Albania, 29; Central
Committee Resolution on, 180;
Council for Religious Affairs, 175;
destruction of, 31, 44, 49, 53, 55-58,
57, 94, 116, 155, 222; and end of
world, 63; and “God is dead,”
289-290; and “godless five-year

plan,” 49; heretical movements
and, 36-41, 44n.6; Islam, 96; Marx
and, 29-30, 55; nationalism and,
213, 228; “Old Believers,” see Rus-
sian Orthodox Church; as “opium
of the people,” 179; peasants and,
260-261, persecution of (Polish),
131, 133, (Russian), 116; Plato and,
44n.6; return to, 79, 153-181; and
search for Truth, 166-171, 174, 1875
socialist hatred of, 29, 37, 43, 58;
Stalin and, 49; and “Third Rome,”
124n.1i; Tolstoy and, 160-161; vs.
totalitarianism, 79, 177-179. See
also atheism; Christ; Christianity;
Church, the
Renaissance, the, 41
repentance, national: Dostoyevsky
on, 109; forgiveness and, 134;
German, 91-92, H4; vs. infringe-
ment of civil rights, 118-11904;
intelligentsia and, 114, 232, 244;
literature and, 115; necessity for,
107-121, 128-135; Poland and,
129-133; of political parties, 109;
Russian “messianism” and,
121-127; in USSR, 91, 96, 111,
114-122, 128-133; for Western co-
lonial policies, 111-112. See also
responsibility

responsibility: Christianity and, 185,
213, 228; international, 6, 139-140;
personal, 113, 224, 233. See also
repentance

resurrection, concept of, 282, 294
Resurrection of Christ, 183, 187
Retif de la Bretonne, The Southern
Discovery, 42

revolution: and the Church, 238, 290;
vs. “counterrevolution,” 13; fallacy
of, 147; and intelligentsia, 236-239,
244; international forces in,
126-127; moral, 137; October Rev-
olution, vi, 98n.3, n4, 123, 281,
283; peasant uprisings, 11, 4on.5,
123, 284; and “Russian pride,” 125;
“Union of the Equal” and, 43“44;
violence and, 81; Western fear of,

71

rights: civil, 118-11904; human,
200-201

304

INDEX

Rublev, Andrei, 156, 174
Russia: future of, 191, 279-294; and
language, 94, 102, 130; national
rebirth of, 196-228, 263; nostalgia
for, 207; as personality, 207, 228;
prerevolutionary, 1 15-1 16, 290 (see
also intelligentsia); sufferings of,
119, 162 (see also repentance,
national). See also nationalism;
USSR

Russian Empire, 91
Russian “idea,” 120, 127
Russian “messianism,” 96, 121-127
“Russian Messianism” (Gorsky), 121
Russian Northeast, 141-142, 272-273
Russian Orthodox Church, 156;
bureaucratism and, 173, 177; crisis
in, 175, 181, 191; and ecumenism,
159; and “Living Church” group,
238n.8; “Old Believers” of, 116,
136, 141, 1740.2; origin and de-
velopment of, 174-175, 178; and
Orthodox tradition, 91, 115, 125,
159, 161, 178, 182, 184, 188, 192;
revolution and, 238, 290; suppres-
sion and survival of, 49, 96,
165-166,216; young people in, 192.
See also Christianity; Church, the;
religion

Russian Social Democratic party, vi,
2 35 n -3

Russian Student ^Christian Move-
ment, 2on.5

sacrifice: Christianity and, 176, 292;
and freedom, 291, 293; intelligen-
tsia and, 256, 272, 274-278, 287, 291 ;
and sacrificial “elite,” 273, 293. See
also repentance, national
Saint-Simon, Claude de, 63; quoted,
221

Sakharov, Andrei Dmitrievich, 197,
217, 218, 251, 258, 295, 296;
“Reflections on Progress, Peaceful
Coexistence and Intellectual Free-
dom,” discussed, 3-19
salvation: Christian, 182, 187-188,
191; of Russia, 215, 256
samizdat , 89, 252-253, 285, 2930.7;
defined, 3n.2

Sargon I, king of Accad, 32

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 217
Schapiro, Leonard, vin. 1
schools. See education
science: and “antiscience,” 288-289;
and atomic war, 7; and conscience,
5; and new culture, 220-221,
255-256; and personality, 220-222;
“scientific socialism,” vi, 65-66,
221-222

Scott, Sir Walter, 100
secret police, 1570.12, 2a8n.8; Cheka
(“Extraordinary Commission”),
nn.3, 126, 133, 2370.7, 271, 288;
GPU (“State Political Administra-
tion”), 2370.7; KGB (“Committee
for State Security”), 2380.7, 295;
MGB (“Ministry of State Secur-
ity”), 2 3 8n. 7 ; NKGB (“People's
Commissariat for State Secur-
ity”), 2 3 8n. 7 ; NKVD (“People's
Commissariat for Internal Af-
fairs”), 6, 2380.7, 288x1.5; OGPU
(“United State Political Admin-
istration'*), 2380.7

self-condemnation (“Metanoia”), 121
self-criticism, 9
self-deception, 46
self-discipline, 80, 85
self-limitation, 107, 135-143. See a/so
repentance, national
self-preservation, 88, 232
Serafim of Sarov, St., 157, 174
Serbsky Institute, 258
serfdom. See slavery
Sergius of Radonezh, St, 157, 174
sex distinction, 203
sexual desires, 51, 77. 'See also mar-
riage

sexual revolution (destruction of
family). See family
Shafarevich, Igor (biography), 296
Shakhty trial, 240
Shevchenko, Taras, 101
“Shigalyovism,” 53, 54
Sholokhov, Mikhail: Quiet Flows the
Don, i26n.i2
Shostakovich, Dmitri, 251
Siberia, 1 1, 129, 141. See also Russian
Northeast

Skobelev, Mikhail, 101

slavery, 54; as punishment, 42, 57;

305

INDEX

slavery (cont)

and serfdom, 116, 226. See also
labor camps

“smatterers”: intelligentsia and,

242-259, 267-269, 273; and

materialism, 246-247, 258
Smena Vekh (flew Bearings ) (publi-
cation), 229

Social Democratic party: West Ger-
man, 74; Russian, vi, 2350.3
socialism: as basic force, 45, 218; vs.
capitalism, 6-8, 29, 67-87; and
death, 61-64; economic, 28-29; ex-
perience and, 66 ; in history, 31-45;
as ideology, 29-31, 46-47* 5*>
65-66, 93, 97; and individuality,
58-61; and internationalism, 91,
283; Lenin on aim of, 198; and
“moral heroism,” 14-15; and
nationalism, 90-91* 93 * 97 ; opin-
ions on origin of, 27-28; and
“piecework,” 15; and “pseudo-
socialism,” 15; and religion (see
religion); “scientific,” vi, 65-66,
221-222; and socialist “ideal,” 47,
52-56, 2i5n.i7; and “socialist in-
tegration,” 216; and “socialist
novel,” 4H3; “theory” vs. “prac-
tice,” 45-48; and violence, 81;
world trend toward, 27-28
Solovki (Solovetsky Islands), 11
Solovyov, Vladimir, i57n.io, 174,
234; quoted, 210, 211
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 189, 295,
296 (biography); authorizes publi-
cation of “The Quiet Don,”
i26n.i2; imprisoned, 11; Lenten
letter of, 175-176, 177; “Letter to
the Soviet Leaders,” 196; Nobel
Prize, quoted on, viii; and tradition
in Russian thought, vii
South Korea, 127
Soviet Union. See Russia; USSR
“speaking in tongues,” 209, 263
Stalin, J. V. (“Uncle Joe”), 274, 284,
288; The Economic Problems of
Socialism , 48; and patriotism, 197;
purges of, vii, I57n.i2, 197, 295;
and religion, 49; and the terror, 115;
and treatment of his own party,
11-12

306

Stalinism, 5, 12, 18; as "deviation’*
from Leninism, 10-12
standard of living, 71, 94, 217, 224.

See also economy
Stepun, Fyodor, 120
Storch, Niklas: quoted, 40-41
Struve, Nikita, vi
Struve, Peter, v, vi
Suvorov, Alexander, 120
“Sverdlovka,” 51
Sweezy, Paul H., 70
Symbolist movement, 1750.4
Symeon, St: quoted, 183

Taborites, 37, 40
Taiwan, 134
Talantov, Boris, 175
Tambov, 11

technology: automation and com-
puterization in, 82, 84; “catching
up” by USSR, 7, 99 * 140; of corpora-
tions vs. military, 70; “progress” in,
15-16, 84, 219; technocracy and,
221. See also industry
technostructures. See conglomerates
Telegin, Semyon (pseudonym), 260,
264; quoted, 254-259 (passim)
Theodosius I (the Great), Roman em-
peror, 178

Third International, 124
“Third Rome,” 124
Third World (backward countries), 7,
74

Tiam, Dudu: quoted, 28
Tibetans, 88

time-lag. See “catching up”

Titian, 189

Toffler, Alvin: Future Shock f 68
Tolstoy, Leo, i57n.io, 158, 161, 162,
174, 189, 234; Confession , quoted,
159-160

totalitarian society: “advantages”
under, 77^79; and Church. 79,
177-179; defects of, 79; vs. demo-
cratic system, 80, 85 (see also dem-
ocratic system); and human per-
sonality, 201; and responsibility,
113; West and, 73-75
Toynbee, Arnold: An Historian* s Ap-
proach to Religion , 52

INDEX

Trotsky, Leon: quoted, 48
Trotskyist organization (“Red Army”)
in Japan, 30-31
Trubetskoy, N., 204n.g
truth, and search for, 159, 166-171,
174, 187, 230-231

Tsetkin, Clara: On Lenin, quoted, 51
Tsvetayeva, Marina, 207
Tugan-Baranovsky, M. V.: quoted,
215^17

Tupolevskaya Sharaga ( The Tupolev
Laboratory) (publication), 24in.i4
Turgenev, I. S.: quoted, 2140.14
Turkey, Armenian massacres in, 111

Uganda, 112

Ukraine, 95, 97, 102; and “Borot-
bists,” 98; Poland and, 132, 133
Ukrainian Nationalist Union, 88
Ulyanov, Alexander, 133
unemployment, 71, 238
Uniate church (Poland), 131
“Union of die Equal, The” (Paris
secret society), 43-44, 55
United Nations, 98-99, 100, 103, 127,
134

United States, 8, 73, 80, 92, 99, 112
universalism, 203-204, 213, 223-227
( passim )

Ur, Third Dynasty of, 32
urban population and structure, 84
USSR: authoritarian system in, 23-25,
79 ^borders of, 127; and “catching
up,” 3> 7> 99, 140; economy of, 95;
fashion and obsolescence in,
68-69; foreign policy of, 6, 7-9,
139-142; and Germany, 74; inter-
nal problems of (Sakharov on),
8-11; and military production, 70;
and nationalism, 15-16, 88-104,
196-228; natural resources in,
72-73, 83, 252, 266; Poland and,
132-133; and Third World, 74. See
also Russia

utopianism, 41-42, 66, 202

Vatican, the, 29. See also Christianity;
Church, die

Veche (Assembly) (journal), 101

Vekhi (Landmarks ) (anthology),
v-vii, 55n.8, 148, 160; and intel-
ligentsia, vi, 155, 2i4n.i4, 229-232,
234-237, 243
Ventsov, L., 257

Verkhovensky, Peter (Dostoyevsky
character), 155

Verras, 42; The History of the
Savarambi, 41
Versailles treaty, 132
Vestnik RSKD (JRusskogo Khristian -
skogo Studencheskogo Dvizhenia)
(Herald of the Russian Student
Christian Movement), 95-96, 121,
203, 242-243, 249, 257, 260
Vietnam and Vietnam war, 13, 92, 127
village: decline of, 97; “state,” 100
violence, 81, 290

Vipper, R. Y.: An Outline of the His-
tory of Socialism in Most Recent
Times, quoted, 45

Volfson, S. Y., 49; The Sociology of
Marriage and the Family, quoted,
50, 51

Voloshin, Maximilian: quoted, 141

“war” communism, 47-48. See also
communism

West: Communist parties in, 12, 127;
competition with, 71; fear of rev-
olution in, 71; guilt of, 111-112
(see also repentance, national); his-
tory of, 128; multiparty system in,
18-19, 22; and natural resources,
72; and search for solutions, 150;
and totalitarian society, 73-75;
USSR imitation of, 7, 20, 140, 150.
See also democratic system; indi-
vidual countries
“Westemizers,” 245^17
White Sea-Baltic Canal, 288
wife-sharing. See family
Winstanley, Gerraid, 42, 43; The Law
of Freedom in a Platform, 41
Witvogel, K., 74

Wladyslaw IV, king of Poland, 131
women: “first duty of,” 50; and labor,
14, 140; as social property, 54. See
also family; marriage
Writers' Union, 25in.i8

307

INDEX

Yakunin, Gleb, 175
Yezhov, Nikolai I., 288
Yugoslavia, 134

Zamyatin, Evgeny, 5 7
Zernov, N., 234n.2

Zheludkov, Father Sergei, 176, 177
Zossima, Father (Dostoyevsky
character), 157n.ro
“Zwickau prophets,” 40
Zygmunt (Sigismund) III, king of Po-
land and Sweden, 131

!

From Under the Rubble

“WE CRAVE FOR FREEDOM”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn and six dissident col-
leagues joined in the mid-seventies to write this
book, which surely remains the most extraor-
dinary debate of a nation’s future published in
modern times. Shattering a half-century of
silence, From Under the Rubble constitutes a
devastating attack on the Soviet regime, a moral
indictment of the liberal West, and a Christian
manifesto calling for a new society— one whose
dominant values would be spiritual rather than
economic. Personally edited by the Nobel Prize-
winning author, fired by his own substantial
contributions, From Under the Rubble articulates
Solzhenitsyn’s most fervent call to action. His
daring, and the remarkable courage of his col-
leagues, is testament to the seriousness of their
demand for a revolution in which one does not
kill one’s enemeies, but in which “one puts
oneself in danger for the sake of the nation.”

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THE WAY OF MY CROSS
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